10 Reasons You NEED to Hire a Landscape Designer

1.      Planning is the most important part of any project. 

a.      A good landscape design will bring beauty and style to any home.  It also can raise your property value 10%-15%.  A plan also directs the project, without it a project can quickly become out of hand or go over budget.

2.      Our designer knows what you are thinking even if you don’t.

a.      Matt, our Designer can take what your needs and wants are and reconcile them with the realities of the site. 

3.      Saves you money in the end.

a.      We can work within budgets, plants, and materials to realize your vision.

b.   We guarantee and stand by our work.

4.      Our Designer works closely with the Installation Crew.

a.      This ensures the vision on the paper is realized.

b.   We dimension every plan using Auto Cad to ensure the greatest amount of accuracy.

5.      Materials and Plants Selection

a.      Selections of materials can be very challenging.  We can filter through colors, styles, and specific applications to get the best results and a cohesive design.

6.      A Landscaping project can be overwhelming.

a.      We can ground your project and fix your problem with a designed solution that is beautiful as well as practical.

7.      Improves the final product.

a.      Landscape designers are masters of the design process.  They close the gap between what the client wants and reality by reconciling existing conditions, views, and elements, with a great design.

8.      Professionally Drawn and Scaled Plan.

a.      We will produce a scaled plan using a AutoCad.

b.      Because not everyone can 'see' a landscape when it is presented in 2D LawnScapes also offers 3D Fly throughs of the proposed landscape, to help with visualization. 

9.      Designing and installing a landscape plan takes a lot longer than you think.

a.      You don’t have time to purchase plants, materials, and install a plan.  The average landscape plan takes about a 40 hour week to install.  Why spend your precious weekends doing in your free time what we can do while you are at work?

10.   A Landscape Designer provides clear direction.

a.      By choosing plants that survive in your location and the best material for the application our Landscape Designer will guide through the confusing process. 

Capability Brown and The Picturesque

            While England has had a rich tradition of landscape design, their style really started to separate itself in the 18^th century.   Before the 1700s the English tended to copy the more formal gardens of the Italian and French.  The 18^th century brought increased wealth to England through both foreign and domestic trade.  This wealth allowed the noble and upper middle class of England to transform the countryside.  The person that carried out this picturesque transformation was Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown (1716-1783).  The nickname ‘Capability’ came from his assurance that his client’s property had the “capability” to become beautiful.  His designs were influenced by the paintings of the picturesque movement.  Between 1751-1783 he designed more than 200 landscapes.  He once turned down a commission in Ireland because he, “Hadn’t finished England yet.”  Capability viewed his work as correcting nature, bringing it to a new, more perfect level.  Brown developed the quintessential English landscape, creating topography that is never flat nor sloping in one direction but expressing a series of concave and convex curves.  He never planted trees in a straight line but in clumps, belts, and screens to direct attention to distant views.  He incorporated the element of surprise in the garden by not using straight lines, drawing your eyes, though your body does not travel the same path.  The placement of the house was very important in his landscape designs.  Capability allowed no ornamental planting to mediate between the home and the surrounding landscape causing the house to stick out in the landscape.  He designed the landscape to control views from the house by using trees and landscape elements. 

Gertrude Jekyll and the Cottage Garden

            “I hold the best purpose of a garden is to give delight and to give refreshment of mind, to soothe, to refine, and to lift up the heart in a spirit of praise and thankfulness.”

                                    -Gertrude Jekyll, Color schemes for the Flower Garden, 1908

            Gertrude Jekyll was the first woman to act as a professional landscape designer.  Jekyll started as an art student and learned to paint in the expressionist style.  This later influenced her landscape and planting design.  Her near sightedness assisted her in conceiving garden schemes less in terms of individual plants than as shapes, textures, and broad masses of color.  One of her most important contributions was designing gardens as a series of seasonal scenes, appearing like different exhibitions planned throughout the year.  Her designs featured broad arching plant forms, most often hanging over stone walls.  The cottage garden developed parallel to the Arts and Crafts movement in architecture and Jekyll was influenced by this.  A Jekyll garden was very detailed and focused on craftsmanship.