The procession through the property begins at gates surrounded by ficus trees and continues along a winding brick drive to the porte cochere. From the main house, visitors stroll beneath an arched arcade or across a sweep of open lawn skirted by a pool and courtyard to their own cottages. But the setting wasn't always so gracious.

"We had to use a machete when we first came on the site to even see the property," says architect Jeffery W. Smith, who coordinated with landscape architect Mario Nievera to integrate a new Italian Renaissance-style house into lush gardens designed to suit the site. The new property, which is situated between the Atlantic Ocean and Lake Worth, was formed from two lots of a former estate. "I wanted to put all the guest rooms outside, exposed to the warm Palm Beach climate, like Mizner did in the 1920s before there was air-conditioning," Smith says.

The house, a modified H-plan set high on a dune to capture views, has wings extending toward the lake. Four guest cottages, two on each side, are linked by arcades and define the sides of the grassy courtyard. The pool is placed opposite the main house at the far end of the court. Terminating these cottage wings are a poolside cabana on one side and an exercise room on the other. The masonry walls are clad in fissured coquina stone, a warm-hued limestone. The spacious main loggia with its five graceful arches fronts the courtyard; broad steps lead down to the lawn and pool.

For Nievera, the scope of the project was matched by the property's resources. "There were magnificent banyan trees that were moved to make way for the house and then brought back to instantly anchor the house in its setting," Nievera says. "There were mature coconut and sable palms throughout the site, and all were saved, moved once to stockpile, and moved again into place after the house was finished."

Generous as the property is, the house and its wings occupy much of the land. For Nievera, a primary issue was to make the contained court feel open and welcoming. "The pool was first designed to be in the center of the court, but Jeffery and I both decided we should have an uninterrupted expanse of lawn to create a spacious feeling, so the pool was placed at the end," he says. Both for its fine texture and durability, Nievera specified a zoysia lawn, a soft yet tough enough surface for grandchildren's play and other activities.

Nievera reflected the Italian architecture of the house in his design. The podocarpuses are trained to resemble the vertical spires of Italian cypress trees; magnificent date palms like those seen in southern Italy and planting beds are neatly defined by dwarf box hedges or laid out in parterres. "The owner loves roses, so in the garden below the grass court there are 400 roses, mostly pink and white, with a few yellows, laid out in quadrants," Nievera says. "And she wanted primarily white flowers,so we used white hibiscus, gardenia, jasmine, spathiphyllum, with a bit of blue from plumbago and purple from bougainvillea for accent."

A charming exception to the formal structuring and understated coloring is found in the courtyards beside each guest cottage. Each is centered by a fountain and accented with flowering plants in terra-cotta pots and vines clambering over the walls. "We wanted guests to look out and see these romantic courtyards full of exotic plants," Nievera says.

This was the first collaboration between Smith and Nievera. This estate and the projects they have completed since fully embrace the architectural history, classical grandeur, and seasonal magic of Palm Beach.

Sources:
Architecture by Jeffery W. Smith
206 Phipps Plaza
Palm Beach, FL 33480
561/832-0202

Landscape architecture by Mario Nievera
184 Sunset Ave. #21
Palm Beach, FL 33480
561/659-2820