Jonathan Deitcher: The Ledges

By Glenn Suokko

With a foreword by Peter Rose and a poem by Victoria Nassi

2025

11 x 9 inches, 192 pages, 250 images, hardcover plus jacket

The Ledges is the story of a twenty-five-year project, the making of a private home in Vermont.

Jonathan Deitcher had no formal architectural or landscape design training when in 1999 he purchased a densely forested two-hundred-acre property on a mountainside facing the Green Mountains, yet his passion to create something entirely his own led him to realize his longtime vision: to design an alpine estate consisting of a lodge, a guest house and swimming pool, tennis court, sauna, and pond, and to work the land to enhance its natural beauty and outstanding views.

It is his landscape making—woodland parks and trails, meadows and wildflower gardens, driveway and waterways—that today is a fine example of allowing the beauty of nature to flourish through intentional design. Deitcher’s biggest challenge was the large rock formations—the ledges for which the place is named—that inhabit the landscape. What could have been viewed as obstacles, he creatively turned to his design advantage to enhance as a vast garden of natural beauty.

In 2024, encouraged to document The Ledges, this book chronicles the development of the property and showcases its many features over twelve months of a year. 

Printed as a private edition of 100 copies.