Outdoor Living in Short Hills, NJ
Backyard Paradiso designs and builds outdoor living for Short Hills, New Jersey, the Hartshorn-planned part of Millburn Township. The work covers terraces and walks, pergolas, decks, outdoor kitchens, lighting, and turf for houses on wooded, hilly lots in Glenwood, Knollwood, Country Club, White Oak Ridge, and the area’s other named sections.
Short Hills is part of the Essex & Morris market on the Markets We Serve roster. It isn’t a separate town. Short Hills is a census-designated place within the Township of Millburn, Essex County, and the Township handles permits, zoning, and historic review for Short Hills and for Millburn’s other sections alike. Stewart Hartshorn founded Short Hills in 1874 as a planned suburb along the rail line, with roads that follow the contours of the land. The area holds about 4,700 housing units (2024 ACS five-year estimates).
Why Backyard Paradiso in Short Hills
The Backyard Paradiso team is a full-service Short Hills contractor. One crew of designers and installers carries each project. That matters on a hillside lot, where grading, footings, drainage, and the finished surfaces all have to agree. Township zoning submissions, tree permits, and Historic Preservation Commission applications come with the project from the start. Site assessments scheduled by appointment.
Services in Short Hills
Short Hills work uses every part of the Backyard Paradiso range. On sloped, wooded lots, turf, hardscape, and landscape work often comes first, because terraces, steps, walks, and lawn set the grade everything else sits on. Outdoor structures follow: pergolas, decks, awnings and screens, railings, and fences. Kitchens, fireplaces, and umbrellas fall under outdoor entertaining, and permanent and holiday lighting under seasonal and specialty. Pools and recreation completes the set.
What Short Hills' conditions mean for a project
Short Hills sits on the shoulder of the First Watchung ridge, on glacial ground where rock can lie close to the surface and water perches above it in wet seasons. Winter ground freezes and thaws many times over. That shapes the build:
- Posts and piers for pergolas, decks, and fences are set below the frost line and planned around rock where a site has it.
- Patios and walks on sloping lots get drainage that carries spring water off the surface rather than under it.
- Steps and walls follow the grade.
Larger programs of new hardscape can reach county soil-erosion and state stormwater review; those thresholds are on the Essex & Morris market page.
Millburn Township adds several steps of its own:
- Permits: issued by the Township Building Department. The Township requires zoning approval for exterior building and site improvements before a permit is issued.
- Contractors: licensed by the State of New Jersey. The Township registers landscape contractors and tree-removal contractors itself.
- Trees and grading: tree work, including grading near protected trees, goes through the Township Forester’s permit process. The Township Engineer issues grading permits.
- Water: New Jersey American Water’s Short Hills system.
Two locally designated historic districts sit inside Short Hills, and the Millburn Historic Preservation Commission reviews exterior changes to properties in both, including site improvements. Flood mapping along the township’s brooks and the Township’s steep-slope rules apply to some properties. A lot-by-lot check settles which of these apply.
Short Hills houses by era
Short Hills has 4,718 housing units, and 4,196 of them are detached single-family houses, about 89 percent (2024 ACS five-year estimates, B25024). The median construction year is 1958 (B25035). The largest single group, 1,154 units, dates from 1939 or earlier. Another 1,013 went up in the 1950s and 970 in the 1960s, so roughly three-quarters of the housing stock predates 1970 (B25034).
The Township’s Environmental Resource Inventory reads those layers section by section:
- Knollwood: late-1920s houses.
- Brookhaven: much of it from the 1940s.
- Country Club: 1950s houses on lots of about a third of an acre, with wide, gently winding streets.
- Mountaintop: mostly built from 1965 to 1975.
- Old Short Hills: older houses on substantial properties along winding roads.
A yard here is usually decades old, shaded by mature trees and shaped by a slope, so projects rework it: a terrace set into the grade, a pergola off the back of a 1950s house, lighting for paths that follow the land.
Nine sections and two historic districts
The Township names nine sections of Short Hills: Knollwood, Glenwood, Brookhaven, Country Club, Merrywood, Deerfield-Crossroads, Mountaintop, White Oak Ridge, and Old Short Hills Estates.
Two historic districts overlap them:
- The Short Hills Park Historic District: Hartshorn’s original planned suburb, with houses built between 1870 and 1928 in Shingle, Queen Anne, and Stick styles, followed by more formal Neoclassical work.
- The Short Hills Village Historic District: the station area and adjoining streets, among them Chatham Road, Forest Drive South, Short Hills Avenue, Woodland Road, Crescent Place, Station Plaza, and Baltusrol Way. Tudor Revival houses there mark a later phase of growth.
Some nearby names aren’t Short Hills. Millburn Center, South Mountain, and Wyoming are other sections of the same township, and Wyoming has its own historic district. Livingston, West Orange, Maplewood, Springfield, Summit, Florham Park, and Chatham Borough are separate municipalities that border Millburn.
Gero Park, the arboretum, and the reservation
Gero Park, on White Oak Ridge Road, is the Township’s main recreation complex, with playing fields, courts, the community pool, and a par-3 golf course. On Forest Drive South, the Cora Hartshorn Arboretum and Bird Sanctuary keeps managed woodland with trails, an outdoor classroom, and the Stone House, used for nature classes and field trips. Hobart Field, a former school site, carries a path between Hobart Avenue and Hillside Avenue.
Along Old Short Hills Road, Old Short Hills Park opens onto a large field bordered by forest, with two small ponds and trails toward South Mountain Reservation. It shares the road with Greenwood Gardens, a 28-acre public garden of Italianate terraces, grottoes, and tree-lined allées that was a private estate until 2003. The reservation itself, an Olmsted-designed Essex County park of 2,110 acres, spreads across parts of Millburn, Maplewood, and West Orange between the Watchung ridges.
The township’s shared traditions mostly happen on the Millburn side:
- the Independence Day celebration run by the volunteer Millburn Short Hills 4th of July Committee
- summer concerts in Taylor Park
- the Tour de Millburn each September, a cycling event with routes through both Millburn and Short Hills
Where a lot backs onto woods or parkland, the design keeps that edge in the view.
How a Short Hills project gets started
The first step is time on the property. That visit covers:
- the slope, the rock, and where water goes in spring
- the trees on the lot and whether Township tree permits apply
- whether the house sits in the Short Hills Park or Short Hills Village historic district
- flood mapping and steep-slope rules where they apply
- how the yard should be used
The result is a concept design and a scope written for that lot.
Backyard Paradiso — the Short Hills team
Phone: (862) 461-2927
Hours: By appointment
Email: [email protected]
Serving: Short Hills sections including Knollwood, Glenwood, Brookhaven, Country Club, Merrywood, Deerfield-Crossroads, Mountaintop, White Oak Ridge, and Old Short Hills Estates