If gardens could be likened to gemstones, the landscape of Laura and Josh, featured on a recent Frontenac Garden Club tour, would classify as a sparkling emerald. From hydrangeas to hostas to pyramidal arborvitae to groundcover astilbe, it glows with more shades and hues of green that could be dreamed up on an artist’s paint palette. The occasional flashes of pink and lavender from hydrangeas, impatiens and spikes of astilbe act as glowing facets reflected off the green of the plants.

Early in the summer Michelle and Dean Millonas knew they had succeeded. It was the day one of their daughters had 15 friends over to swim in their recently installed pool. With the pool filled with his sister’s friends, their son and his friends decided they would head for the pickleball court. 

  Natasha Merchant-Pappu has lived all over the world. She is comfortable in Massachusetts and Connecticut, London, Bombay and Poona in India. But there is probably no place where she is more at home than in her Ladue garden. 

The words “sleek,” “clean” and “architectural” aren’t often used to describe landscapes and gardens. But in the case of this Frontenac home, they fit.

When they built their current home less than two years ago, the homeowners, now empty nesters, were looking for “easy livability.” The words “clean modern aesthetic” described what they wanted for the interior of the home, where the predominant color palette is “a mix of warm neutrals.”

If Beatrix Potter’s charming characters from the English countryside were to vacation in the United States, they would undoubtedly make a stop in Lauren Knight’s University City garden.