Landscape Design

Most landscapes in the Bluegrass grow by accident. A patio one year, a row of shrubs the next, a fence when the dog arrives, until the property is a collection of decisions that never met each other. A master plan is the antidote. It considers the whole property at once, even when the work is phased across years, so that everything built later already has its place.

Design begins with the walk. Iris Vale or one of our senior designers spends a morning on your property with you, reading slope and drainage, counting hours of light, finding the views worth keeping and the ones worth screening. We ask how you actually live outside: where morning coffee happens, where guests gather, what the garden needs to do in February when nothing blooms.

From the walk comes the concept plan: arrival, rooms, circulation, and the planting structure that holds it all. We present it at the studio, walk you through the reasoning, and revise it together. The final master plan includes hardscape drawings, a full planting plan with species named down to the cultivar, lighting and irrigation schematics, and an investment analysis that prices each phase honestly, so you can build in the order that makes sense.

Design fees are quoted flat after the first walk, and are credited toward construction when we build the work. Roughly a third of our design clients build over multiple seasons; the plan is written so the garden looks intentional at every stage, not half-finished.