Jeremy Martin, owner of Willow Gates Home & Landscape, first received a call from his client about the “Ultimate Backyard Lancaster” project in summer of 2023. Martin was on vacation at the time, but he was so intrigued by his client’s description of their dream project that he felt compelled to respond immediately.
“It was the kind of project that comes along maybe every 10 years, maybe once in a career,” Martin said.
Ultimate Backyard Lancaster would eventually go on to win the Segmental Concrete Pavement – Permeable category and earn an Honorable Mention in Outdoor Living Features category at the 2025 Hardscape North America Awards.
But the Ultimate Backyard Lancaster isn’t just an award-winning project. It’s proof that even the most ambitious visions can become reality when every detail is treated with care.
Building a Dream
Martin’s client had been planning this project since 2015, when he first built his home. By the time he reached out to Martin, the architectural drawings for the entertainment barn the project included were mostly complete, but the real work was just beginning.
Martin thinks and designs in 2-D. For this project, he started with the two largest features: the barn footprint and the pool dimensions. From there, he built outward, carefully considering how each element would flow together.
In addition to the barn and pool, the client also initially requested a full half-court basketball court. Once Martin showed him what that would require, they scaled back to free throw lines and other basketball court elements so the final look would still be impressive, but not overwhelming.
Finding the Right Materials
“One of the guiding principles was this had to look like it’s built at the same time as the home, despite being 10 years later,” Martin said.
That guiding principle would shape every design decision for Martin.
The property also already featured outdoor living space built in 2017, complete with a bocce court and outdoor kitchen. Rather than forcing a perfect match with the older materials, Martin took a thoughtful approach.
All retaining walls and the barn used a natural stone veneer that matched the outdoor kitchen and closely coordinated with the house. This created cohesion instead of contrast.
“I really hated the idea of adding in yet another color, another texture,” Martin said. “I didn’t want it to be a complete fruit salad of everything thrown in there.”
For the pool patio, the client fell in love with the texture of Techo-Bloc’s Everest paver and wanted it in a diamond pattern using three colors: very dark gray, light gray, and medium tan.
When the client initially requested mixing all three colors in three different sizes throughout the large patio in addition to the pool, Martin pushed back.
“I said, ‘That’s just way too busy. We need to dial it back,’” Martin said.
Instead, Martin used the same color palette in much more muted tones—very light gray, very light cream, and very light tan—for the main patio. The result was visual interest without overwhelming the massive space.
“I love it. I think that really brought it all together. Those colors came together perfectly,” Martin said.
Sweating the Details
The curves in this project stand out as the most challenging and rewarding elements for Martin.
Martin wanted the semicircle at the shallow end of the pool, a curved walkway, and a circular fire pit seating area to flow together perfectly. He spent hours during the design phase ensuring these curves aligned, then duplicated that precision in the field.
“Those are the little details that I really sweated,” he said. “They were really important to me, and you’re like, ‘is it really worth it?’ You look at a picture at the end, and, yes, it was worth it. Those curves all are pretty much perfect.”
The same attention to detail extended to the diamond pattern around the pool. Martin designed the borders and everything to work with full and half diamonds—no slivers anywhere. All four sides were laid out meticulously to avoid any partial cuts.
The Permeable Challenge
Adding nearly a quarter acre of impervious surface in Pennsylvania’s Chesapeake Bay watershed meant serious stormwater management requirements. The project needed a 100-year stormwater plan capable of storing 7.5 inches of rainfall.
The solution required making the entire patio and all artificial turf areas permeable with a 20-inch base.
“It’s kind of crazy. We didn’t need that much base, it’s simply a patio, but we had to store 7.5 inches, and that’s what it came out to be,” Martin said.
The team also constructed a massive infiltration bed measuring 30 feet wide by 90 feet long and 30 inches deep for the barn, driveway, and other improvements.
“Permeable truly does make sense. It’s good stewardship. It’s good management, and given you’re building a patio anyway, we’re already putting a base in. To make it deeper and put stormwater management underneath it just makes sense in a lot of cases,” Martin said.
A Year in the Making
From initial contact with the client to getting permits in hand took a full year. Stormwater planning alone consumed over half that time.
Installation continued right up until winter arrived, with the team working as snow was flying and temperatures dropped into the teens.
But the most rewarding moment came during installation. Martin arrived one Saturday to find his client playing basketball with his granddaughter on the not-quite-finished court.
“This really kind of encapsulated why he wanted to build this. It’s for his family and his friends. It’s not a public space, he’s not renting it out, this is just a place for him to hang out with his friends and family,” Martin said.
“It’s easy to lose sight of that when you’re building something this over the top, but at the end of the day, that’s what it’s for. He’s hosting people there constantly, family, friends, board meetings. He built this place to be used. It’s not just something to show off with. This is a place he wanted to use, and he is. He’s using it all the time.”
Details Over Scale
The scale of this project is staggering. More than 4,500 square feet of pavers isn’t something you see often.
“Everyone who’s seen this project is kind of mind-boggled by the sheer scope,” Martin said. “I do view it as very much a privilege and an honor to be able to build this for the client.”
Winning in two categories at the 2025 HNA awards validated all the hard work Martin and his team put into the project. For aspiring hardscapers who want to one day work on their own award-winning projects, Martin encourages them to focus on the details, not just the scale.
“Details matter,” Martin said. “Just the sheer scope of a project or sheer scale isn’t really the most important thing. So yes, this is an amazing project, a once-in-a-lifetime project that I never even would have dreamed of. But it’s really the little details that matter, whether it’s a big project or a small project.”
He points to the clean diamond pattern around the pool, the perfectly flowing curves, the muted and coordinating color palettes. These are the elements that elevate good work to exceptional work.
“If you lay a 5,000-square-foot patio and there’s no character to it, the joint lines aren’t straight—you missed the point, you know?” Martin said. “I don’t want to do that kind of work. To me, it’s not the sheer size. I care about the details.”
His client’s decade-long dream is now a showcase of what’s possible when scale meets meticulous hardscaping craftsmanship.