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Inside, the home reflects its Tudor architecture, handsomely accented with leaded glass, carved paneling and a stone fireplace. But if you step through the cathedral-arched doorway that leads from the small, study-like vestibule and into the backyard, you’ve entered a portal to another world. What was once an elegant English residence has morphed into a lush, tropical island resplendent with vivid colors, exotic foliage, turquoise-blue water and the splash of a waterfall.

That’s just the effect Del Poe was hoping for. “I’ve always loved water vacations; going to places like St. John, the Virgin Islands. To me it’s very peaceful. I had a pool at my other home in U. City and it was the best toy I ever owned. I wanted to find a house with enough land for the kind of pool I envisioned when I moved. After looking at lots of backyards, I found out about this house five days before it went on the market. It had the space and the right sun exposure for a pool. I said, ‘If the house isn’t a mess, I’m going to buy it.’”

Luckily, the house was in fine shape and he purchased the residence the day it went on the market. “I negotiated down to full price,” joked Del, who is semi-retired from the real estate investment business.
Del bought the house in 2002 and put in the pool during the summer of 2003. “I talked with a couple of pool companies and they came up with ideas, but it wasn’t what I wanted. I finally came up with my own design and presented it to Free Form Pools. They took what I had drawn and tweaked it.”

The collaborative effort resulted in an infinity edge pool surrounded by a limestone deck. Near the house, the pool features a gradual, beach-like entrance. On the opposite side of the pool, a negative edge allows water to spill over the side, creating a waterfall that flows into a limestone catch basin and leads to a lower-level seating area. The water is then pumped back up to the upper pool, creating a continual flow of moving current – with the look of the pool extending all the way out to the horizon.

Once the hardscape was in place, the rest of the yard “was a blank canvas,” Del says. Fortunately, he knew just the artist to paint his tropical picture, and he called his friend Barbara Lambert, a landscape designer and owner of Outer Visions by Barbara.

“I gave her carte blanche to put in what she thought was appropriate,” he recalls. “Barbara mixed textures and colors and made sure something was blooming all year,” he explained. “We went mostly with perennials, trees and shrubs, using rich accent colors.”

Del himself was no stranger to growing things. “My father was a gardener but he grew vegetables; things like corn and tomatoes. He was a minister and we lived in small towns and had a farm. This was on a totally different scale,” says Del.

To draw the eye from the house to the garden, vibrant geraniums and a dwarf, burgundy-leafed patio peach tree (Prunus persica) ‘Bonfire’ grow just outside the vestibule door. The color of the leaves is a complementary match to the rich, burgundy wall color of the vestibule. On a rise behind the pool a shrub-sized, red-leaf Japanese maple blends with rich green mugo pine and blue spruce. Slightly further back are two dogwoods and a saucer magnolia. A huge clump of feathery blue star (Amsonia hubrichtii), native to this area, softens the rocky drop-off along the waterfall.

Tips From a Weekend Gardener
Del Poe has a knack for recycling the tropical plants that give his garden its island ambiance. It’s a system that he has down to a science:

• Banana trees and hibiscus are dug up, placed in pots and go into his heated garage before they can be stressed by the cold weather. To prevent the root systems from drying out, he waters them throughout the winter.

• Canna rhizomes are dug up after the first frost, when the leaves have died down, but before the first freeze. Making sure to clean the dirt off of the rhizomes, he stores them in several different cardboard boxes in a dry spot in the basement. “I like to use several different boxes,” he explains, “so if moisture gets into one box, I still have boxes with dry bulbs.”

• In the spring, when the danger of frost has past and the temperature remains above 45 degrees, he replants the tropicals in the garden.