After years of living in the Bankers Lofts downtown, Brad Fratello and Doug Moore sought out a new home that would allow them to step out their back door and enjoy a pool and patio, something they were missing with loft living. They began their search with two things in mind… remaining in the city and having a pool to enjoy the colors and sounds of the water. Searching high and low, they explored countless options before narrowing in on the Grove, a growing and vibrant neighborhood in Forest Park southeast that is easily walkable.

You are sitting in a glistening stainless steel and white-tiled kitchen, watching a Portuguese woman in what could best be described as 19th Century kitchen garb, including a white linen cap that is the much more stylish precursor to the kitchen hair net, stirring a black cauldron over an open flame in the nearly floor-to-ceiling burnished red brick fireplace that takes up an entire wall.

When a Town & Country couple set out to build their third custom home just over two years ago, they found that pictures were indeed worth 1,000 words – and the key to streamlining their vision into a picture-perfect reality in just 13 months.

St. Louis Homes & Lifestyles Garden of the Year. Although an honor, the words hardly do justice to Muffy and Chip's horticultural masterpiece. Those who have been lucky enough to stroll the couple’s two-acre, Olivette landscape might easily term it a garden for the decades or a wonder of the suburban world.

Create an ornamental effect in your landscape with a specimen plant. Serving as the focal point in a particular spot, specimens bring dramatic impact.

Chamaecyparis Reis Dwarf
“Unique and a bit unusual is a good way to describe the Chamaecyparis Reis Dwarf, one of my favorites. This conifer has foliage that is a dark, rich green with short contorted branching. “ Jim Graeler, Chesterfield Valley Nursery.

It must take tremendous confidence to say to your builder, “surprise us!” But that’s exactly what this couple did when choosing Lorrien Homes to build out the lower level of their nine-year-old story-and-a-half in Chesterfield.