hink Cinderella, My Fair Lady and the story of The Ugly Duckling. Joe and Cara Reinberg can totally relate to these transformational tales.
In their case the Ugly Duckling was the over one-acre yard of their Frontenac home. Not only was the back yard open to the street traffic of a main road, a Metropolitan Sewer District creek/culvert designed to channel run-off rainwater bisected the property.
Undaunted, Joe recalled his days growing up in Seven Oaks Neighborhood and his love of exploring nearby creeks and woods. He spent the early days of Covid driving around to get ideas on how the largely undeveloped landscape could be transformed into something unique. Not only that, he wanted the yard to be the kind of place his children, now ages six, three and one, could grow up exploring. “I didn’t want just a back yard with a swing set,” he explains. “I wanted a place where they could go on some adventures.” Evergreens had a high priority as they would provide year-round screening and privacy.
The process began by installing a line of large ‘Green Giant’ arborvitae to block the view of the main road and muffle the traffic noise. Working with landscape designer Paola Behner of Frisella Landscape Group, Joe was thinking in terms of a row of one kind of evergreen here and another kind of evergreen there. Paola quickly impressed upon him the importance of “mixing things up.”
“The first big project was making the culvert look natural,” she explains. Drawing her inspiration from Colorado and the former silver mining town of Telluride in the rugged San Juan Mountains, she ordered up over 60 tons of boulders to transform the creek and blend it into the landscape. While some boulders lined the creek, others went into nearby areas to give them a rugged, Colorado ambiance and tie the design together.
She had high praise for the craftsmen who looked at every boulder, selected the right one for each spot and, using heavy machinery, painstakingly placed it so it looked as if it had been there for centuries.
A bridge over the culvert to enable the homeowners to utilize their entire property provided another important landscaping step. In addition, Paola designed a firepit area with seating, a small water feature and included a play area for the children.
While the hardscape was important, it is the selection and planting of the trees and shrubs that caused the property to receive a 2025 Award of Excellence from the National Association of Landscape Professionals.
Learning that Joe had a lifelong interest in trees and particularly evergreens, “they let me run with it,” he says with a laugh. More than that, Paola happily joined the race. Joe is “passionate about landscaping and he loves trees and to talk about trees,” she affirms.
Nearly 30 different varieties of trees and shrubs now thrive in the landscape, the vast majority of them evergreens. Many are selected for their architectural interest. The Japanese red pine ‘Tanyosho’ is known for its umbrella-like shape. The pyramidal Blue Atlas cedars feature silvery, draping, twisted limbs. Another Japanese pine sports pom pom-like branches resembling a Dr. Seuss drawing of a Lorax, Paola notes.
“It was not an easy project,” she adds, explaining that many of the trees were already large to create immediate impact. “Some of the tree root balls were six feet wide.”
From its start in 2022, the project is still being tweaked. “It’s been super fun,” she says, “especially because the clients are so nice and you get to do this for a family that is growing. It is something that the kids will enjoy for years. It (the landscape) is a collection of unique specimens, some that are rare and hard to find. It is almost like creating a family botanical garden.”
