LANDSCAPE DESIGN
Portland, Or and Vancouver, Washington and surrounding areas
Do you need a landscape design?
Have you tried to figure out how to change your patio so it’s big enough but not too big, has a pleasing shape and fits into the right spot? You probably want your yard to look more like a photo you’d have on your fridge and less like a “what not to do” picture in a magazine. Perhaps your mental landscape dream has become a mind quagmire because you can’t figure out where to put the hot tub, water feature, BBQ, play structure or whatever. A landscape design will help create an enticing, yet sensible outdoor living space to calm our head and your heart.
When you lust for the plants you see in the nursery, or want vivid fall color, or fragrance in your yard, flowers to pick, pretty plants to screen the neighbors but feel overwhelmed by all the plant choices, then a landscape design is just the ticket. In our designs, each plant is drawn to the size it will become, color and plant choice is fussed over throughly and larger shrubs and trees are placed appropriately for shade, window height and screening.
The Gregg and Ellis Landscape Design team in Portland, Oregon has the imagination to develop landscape designs to help visitors easilty find front doors (sounds crazy unless you have this kind of house), come up with ideas to make small yards look and feel bigger, and give large yards a feel of intimacy. Useless sideyards have become lush and desirable , front yards envied by neighbors, and steep slopes have become sportcourts.
How does our landscape design process work?
We serve clients in the great Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington areas. If that’s you, this is how we work with you…
1) Initial interview. We meet on-site for 30 to 45 minutes to discuss the dreams you have for your yard and see the yard. It’s a time to get to know each other a see if we can work together to create your landscape design. You are presented with a proposal for the design at this time.
2) A base map is created. We measure the house, the property and exisiting plants, walks, drives, walls, etc. Sun and shade patterns, adjacent property issues, environmental impacts are all noted.
3) Conceptual plans. With the base map and notes taken during the interview, we start drawing and drawing and drawing, balancing the elements you want with the space you have. The ideal puts it all together so it looks simple, but has a twist of different. Once we come up with one great landscape design conceptual, we draw, draw, draw agian to come up with a second, equally mouth watering landscape design conceptual.
4)Meeting. We all meet to look at the conceptual plans and discuss what you like and what’s not so hot. Sometimes clients love them both and can’t decide, sometimes a client falls in love with one conceptual immediately, and sometimes we choose bits and pieces of each.
5) Finish up. Back in the studio the landscape design is drawn. All the hardscape elements like paths, patios, walls, fences and other hard stuff in drawn, and then we put on our thinking caps to figure out the perfect plants for each area and how their colors and texture will all fit together. You end up with a landscape design that you can either self install or hire a contractor to install.
6)Landscape Installer. Experience has taught us that the best landscape design installations are created when you allow us to facilitate throughout construction and be on site at regular intervals. We work with excellent landscape contractors and are happy to recommend the perfect one to install your landscape design. If an issue arises that calls for change, the contractor will call us to problem solve and the lines of communication will stay open.
