LOCATION: St. Petersburg, Fla.
COMPANY: Landscapes by Randy Lee
DETAILS: When building a large house on the beach, it’s important to consider how the ongoing project will affect the neighbors. It’s also important to consider that, sometimes, those neighbors might actually come from the ocean.
That was a big factor in the “Contemporary Gulf Front Retreat” project’s design when the old beach house went down to make room for a rebuild and redesign, and company owner Randy Lee says all the light fixtures needed to be turtle-compliant to not interfere with their reproduction and egg laying.
“If there’s a lot of stray (and intense) lighting, the turtles seem to be drawn to it. So, you can only use amber-, orange- and yellow-hued lighting,” Lee says. “I got with my lighting people, and we realized that if we do color-changing lighting, we can flip everything on to the orange, amber, red hues, and we’re in compliance.”
But Lee says the property is a lot more than just lighting, and the 3-foot sea wall to block wind and salt spray, the new salt-resistant plantings and a redesigned patio area all add to the award-winning, modern aesthetic.
After more than two years of work, Landscapes by Randy Lee won a gold award from the National Association of Landscape Professionals’ Awards of Excellence program for this project.
