Commerce, Georgia · Circa 1843
Shankle House
A landscape master plan for Jackson County's oldest home
Believed to be the oldest building in Commerce, Georgia, the Shankle House began as a two-room cabin raised by Eli and Rebecca Shankle around 1843 — and grew, by the 1870s, into the Italianate-influenced home that stands today.
Their son Seaborn Shankle built the larger house around the original cabin in the mid-1870s, and three generations later the property became the childhood home of author Olive Ann Burns, who drew on her family's stories there for her novel Cold Sassy Tree. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places and now an event venue for small weddings and gatherings, the house needed grounds equal to that history: a landscape that reads as an extension of the architecture, not an addition to it. SPG's Residential Studio was engaged to master plan the full property, from motor court to pool terrace to the quiet path toward the Shankle family cemetery.
The Landscape
At the heart of the plan, the existing pool becomes an outdoor room. New stone coping, a covered stone patio, and a cedar pergola frame the water on three sides, while layered plantings soften the edge where hardscape meets open lawn.
Clay pavers thread from the motor court through a sequence of garden moments — a fountain, stepping stones, a shaded bench — before opening onto the lawn, where a mixed hedge screens the garage and gives the grounds a settled, established feel from the porch and the parking court alike.
Traditional Southern plantings carry the Italianate character of the house through the garden: clipped boxwood, gardenia, and camellia hold their structure through the seasons, while dogwood, redbud, and crape myrtle bring color from spring through fall.
The pool terrace today, with the original outbuilding preserved at the garden's edge.
From Sketch to Site
An early concept sketch of the pool terrace, pergola, and covered patio.
Every SPG Residential project begins on paper. Concept sketches let us test sightlines from the porch and parking court and talk through material choices with the client before a single stone is set.
The site plan on the following spread maps each element back to the ground it occupies — the same key used on the construction drawings, carried straight through to how we talk about the project today.
A Southern Palette
Plantings were chosen to hold structure through winter and offer something new in every other season — evergreen backbone, spring bloom, and fall color layered together.
The Grounds Today
