Project Spotlight - sharing a garden design project in process

Do you ever wonder what a garden designer does? Where does a garden design start? The answers are vast and quite different depending on the project at hand. Last spring I began working with a new client whom I've known through horticulture circles. This is how we began... she presented me with a list of priorities for her new garden - number one - a design for a new deck, as hers is failing, information about her and what is most important to her - plants, being outdoors and creating several more usable and beautiful spaces around her home. She described her aesthetics verbally as well as visually and that she intended to have her garden installed in phases over several years. We conquered the deck design and a garden plan for the entire space. Further design details and on-site design work will be tackled at appropriate intervals during the project. The following, as excerpted from a recent Lilyvilla Gardens newsletter,  illustrate our steps, thus far, toward her new garden.


PROJECT SPOTLIGHT - IN PROCESS

Project Goals: create a design for a new deck that would minimize the visual impact of the deck while also increasing the overall size by 50%. Create a naturalistic garden for an avid gardener/plant lover that can be built in phases. I reconfigured the deck’s footprint which added more usable space and designed planters to surround the deck which act to ‘seat’ the tall deck into the garden. The planters will be home to small deciduous trees which will provide a tree canopy to look down upon. Stairs from the deck turn and move gradually through the space. The planters bring the architecture of the house into the garden and make the deck an integral component of the house, thus, reducing the visual impact of the deck. The garden design includes an upper gravel terrace, a sinuous pathway through a tree grove that terminates with a lower seating area.

existing deck

conceptual rendering of new deck and planters

projection sketch illustrating the view from about deck and planters

garden concept drawing