New Year New Landscape: Start Planning Your Dream Garden with the Help of Our Landscape Designers

planning your dream garden by sketching your ideal landscape
01
Should You Work with a Landscape Designer?
02
Start Your Garden Planning
03
Working with a Landscape Designer

As the New Year approaches, we begin to think of all the fresh changes and new beginnings ahead. While there’s still plenty of snow on the ground and the summer sun is months away, now is the perfect time to start thinking about how we can make the most of our outdoor spaces. Perhaps this is the year to build that new patio you’ve been coveting, or to truly reimagine your garden design. Whatever the scale of your project, our landscape designers have the expertise to make any dream a reality.

Should You Work with a Landscape Designer?

Like all seasoned professionals, our landscape designers are highly trained experts who are deeply familiar with every aspect of landscaping. While novice DIY-ers may appreciate the challenge of taking on their own landscaping project, re-designing an outdoor space is an immense project with an enormous amount of details to consider. Everything from the pH balance of our flowerbeds to planning the structural elements of our hardscapes has a thin margin for error, which can set us back more time, labor, and money.

Landscape designers know exactly what they’re doing from the moment they set foot in a new space. With past knowledge to draw from, they can advise you on what will or won’t work and collaborate with you to map out a plan that will suit your desired time frame and budget.

Start Your Garden Planning

For major re-designs, the last thing we want is to rush into them! Planning in the cold months allows ample time to develop a sound strategy for executing our landscaping project. Take some time to consider questions like:

What will our hardscapes be? Hardscaping provides the “bones” to any landscape design. Anything from a wraparound deck, to natural stone retaining walls, to cascading water features fall under the category of hardscaping. You may also want to build in space for other gardening activities you might want to try, like the methods described in this guide to composting for beginners. Once we’ve decided on the structures that will guide the flow and focal points of the area, we can start to think about how we’ll fill them in with plant life.

What are our plant preferences? A benefit of working with a landscape designer is that we don’t need to have an encyclopedic knowledge of every annual and perennial under the sun. Simply explaining your taste in plants, including your favorites and the ones you’d prefer to avoid, will help your designer develop a garden plan that suits your style.

How should we style our ground? While black earth makes for a neat and tidy garden bed, we can also get creative with wood mulches, natural stones, gravels, and ground cover plants to pull together a specific aesthetic. The impact of ground details can be pretty amazing, and in many cases, your ground covers can have beneficial effects for your garden.

Working with a Landscape Designer

Our landscape designers are passionate about what they do, and working with one of them is always an exciting and positive experience. Here’s what to expect from the process:

Consult: The initial consultation is an opportunity to get to know your designer and begin to discuss your wishes for your property. We recommend inviting your landscaper into your space to help them understand what they’ll be working with. You can also save images from magazines, Pinterest, or Instagram as references to help your designer get a feel for the plants and fixtures you gravitate toward.

Discuss Logistics: Once everyone is on the same page, be clear about your budget and timeline, and how flexible you are with both. Open communication is crucial to avoid contrasting expectations between you and your designer.

Allow Time for Design: Once your designer knows the parameters of the project, you’ll part ways and they’ll begin to develop a visual design for you to review. When it comes time to discuss the design, some of us may feel pressure to accept the design to avoid seeming impolite, unappreciative, or to spare the designer’s time. Keep in mind, your designer is collaborating with you and doing their best to reflect a design they believe you might have thought up yourself. Our designers welcome your input, changes, and requests to ensure the result is exactly what you want – it’s your yard, after all!

InBlog-CTA-Small

Make an Action Plan: At this point in the process, you may carry on with a design team to bring your dream to life, and our designers would be happy to suggest one to you. You may also choose to take on the project yourself. If you decide to go for it on your own, your designer is a wonderful resource to explain the steps and materials you’ll need. You may discover that the project is more involved than you can manage on your own, in which case, you always have the option to let us suggest the perfect landscaper for you so you can relax and enjoy the end result.

A new landscape can completely transform the exterior of our homes, boosting property values and creating an inviting place to spend time. If this is the year to make your outdoor fantasy a reality, our team of outstanding professional designers can transform your old space into something brand new.

Join Our Newsletter!