We’re returning to Valley View, an 11-acre property in northern Delaware where Danilo and the Maffei Landscape Design team are developing a master plan that connects the home, gardens, and surrounding woodland into one cohesive experience. In our last update, we looked at design development: the phase where the big ideas from the schematic plan started to take on real materiality, from the vanishing water feature to the shift from a stone masonry wall to a boulder wall near the garage.
Now the project is moving into its next phase: construction documentation.
Read the other parts of this series below:
- Part 1 – Valley View: A Forever Home Rooted in Nature
- Part 2 – Inside the Valley View Project: The Art of Concept Development
- Part 3 – Designing the Moments: How Valley View Will Feel to Live In
- Part 4 – Design Development at Valley View: Turning Big Ideas into Buildable Details
FROM MATERIALITY TO DETAIL
Design development established what the landscape would be built from. Construction documentation is about setting out exactly how it all comes together.
With the architect and general contractor now on board, this phase exists to serve three purposes: obtaining permits, getting accurate pricing, and producing a construction set of drawings precise enough for every contractor on the project, landscape, masonry, and beyond, to build from the same page. The goal is one contiguous whole when the project is complete, even though dozens of hands will touch it along the way.
HARDSCAPE: PAVEMENT AND MATERIALITY
Construction documentation for Valley View splits naturally into two modes: landscape construction, the hardscape, and planting design, the softscape.
On the hardscape side, the drawings spell out exactly what each surface is made of and how it behaves. The main driveway will be asphalt. The courtyard, a more elevated moment on the property, calls for exposed aggregate concrete, with expansion and control joints laid out so the pavement resists cracking in a controlled way, and where it does crack, it happens along those joints, becoming part of the pavement’s aesthetic rather than a flaw in it.
RETHINKING THE RETAINING WALL
Early in design development, the retaining wall near the garage was imagined as stone masonry. As the design evolved, the team shifted to a boulder wall instead, a better fit for the way the property moves from structured space near the home into a softer, woodland edge beyond.
Construction documentation is where that decision gets built out in full technical detail. Working with a structural engineer, the team determines the width of the reinforced wall behind the visible stone, the size and spacing of the rebar, the concrete specification, and how far back the footing needs to extend. What started as an early hand sketch becomes a drawing precise enough for excavators, masons, and concrete contractors to build a wall meant to stand for generations.
READING THE SECTION VIEW
One of the key drawings in this phase is the section view, essentially a slice through the wall, the way a slice of cake reveals its layers.
The section shows the ground line in front of the wall, the wall itself, the portion of stone that will actually be visible, and the ground line behind it. Different hatch patterns represent different materials, called out in detail alongside the drawing: the bluestone cap, the stone chosen to match the house as specified by the architect, the strength of the concrete in the foundation wall, and the thickness and width of the footing beneath it.
Behind the visible stone sits a continuous concrete foundation, not unlike a basement wall, built wide and strong to bear the weight of the wall and resist the ground pressure pushing against it. Behind that is coarse gravel, its pore space allowing groundwater to drain down into a continuous pipe that carries it safely beyond the wall. None of this will be visible once construction is complete, and the homeowners will never think about it. But it’s what allows the wall to do its job for decades to come.
PLANTING, IN PRECISE DETAIL
The planting palette follows the same evolution. In design development, the front garden’s perennial blend was represented as a single green shape on the page, useful for capturing the mood and general composition, but not yet buildable.
Construction documentation gets the plan down to the level of individual plants: exactly where each species goes and how many of each. The landscape contractor can now see the precise difference between where a Winterthur smooth viburnum sits versus a Becky Shasta daisy, a heath aster, or a stand of autumn moor grass, each placed with an eye toward foliage texture, bloom time, and mature size, so the planting reads as one balanced composition rather than a list of parts.
WHAT’S NEXT
Valley View is expected to break ground toward the end of this month. Grading, pavements, and the retaining wall will move forward early, alongside the start of home construction, guided by the drawings developed in this phase. The planting itself is a later chapter; that work won’t begin for another year.
We’ll continue sharing updates as Valley View moves from construction documentation into the ground, and closer to becoming a landscape the family can live in, walk through, and enjoy season after season.