Landscape designer puts her skills to work
NORWALK — Alice Cooke decided 15 years ago to move into a three-bedroom, colonial-style house on Riverview Drive to es- cape the noise. The house she had been living in before was on a very busy street.
“One day, it just got unbearable,” she said.
Built in 1926, 17 Riverview Drive is at the end of a deadend street and sits along the Silvermine River. She’s found peace and quiet in the 2,000-square-foot house and has used her landscape design skills to refurbish the exterior of the house. The interior of the house was upgraded by her as well, she said.
Thanks to her 22 years of experience as a landscape designer, the front yard now boasts stone and garden walls with new plantings.
In the backyard, she designed the lawn, trees, perimeter beds and a stone terrace near the creek. She’s also removed five oak trees in the backyard and “limbed up” eight significant older beach, oak and maple trees — ones that range from 60 to 100 feet tall — to provide a wider view of the river.
“It feels cathedral like,” she said of the makeover. “You can see further down the lawn and the lawn can grow better. It presents the trees as sculptural aspects.”
The home is well-located between Interstate 95 and the Merritt Parkway but is ironically on a river. That was part of what drew her to the 1920s home, she said. Shopping malls are close and the Silvermine Arts Center was enticing to her and her husband, who is also a fine artist.
Cooke’s own yard is a humble example of the type of landscape design work she’s brought to clients from Greenwich to Fairfield, she said.
“They see it as something that improves their lifestyle and the value of the house and it creates a place for their friends and family to come,” she said.
Although Cooke is retiring and moving again, this time to Sarasota, Florida, she will be taking a little piece of Norwalk with her. With help from a few carpenters, she had one of her trees milled, cured, and
transformed into a desk and a hall bench for her new house. “So I have two beautiful things to take with me,” she said.
The house with its seven rooms, two bathrooms, one-car garage, an attic and a basement is on sale for $649,000, said Adelaide Waring, of William Raveis Real Estate.
With many modern houses, builders have cut corners to save money, buying products from overseas that are not of the best quality, Waring said, but that’s not the case with 17 Riverview Drive.
“It’s a real house with real floors and real doors,” the realtor said.
Waring and Cooke agreed the home is “emotionally appealing” and comforting.
“It makes me think of an era where people weren’t too busy to sit on their porch or read the Sunday paper or visit with their neighbors,” Waring said.
Cooke said even though she’s moving to escape the cold, she’ll miss the long views that lead toward the river outside of the house.