First your landscape architect meets with you at your home to take a first look at your property, discuss your goals—how you’d like your landscape to look and how you’d like it to function (i.e., you want a private space, space to entertain, etc.)—and identify some of the possible opportunities and challenges to achieving those goals.

As we talk, the scope of the project begins to take shape, as well as the level of design process necessary. Sometimes a quick sketch is all that is needed and sometimes the process involves multiple concepts or detailed documentation.

At this point a proposal for a design fee is provided, based on the overall scope of the design and of the process, and you determine whether to move forward with the project.

To start this phase of the process, we ask you to provide a plat of survey for your property, so that we can map out your property’s boundaries, easements and home measurements. We take an inventory of existing vegetation, take photographs and make site observations of challenges and opportunities such as drainage, views, shade/sun, elevations, etc. All of these aspects are discussed by our design team and are incorporated into the development of the design.

In this phase, your stated wants and needs, the identified opportunities and challenges of your property and our creative solutions to meet those requirements come together to create one or more design ideas and concepts.

We then share these ideas and concepts with you, spurring more discussion, and then leading to refinement of the design concepts and a final design.

The final design provides detailed specifications for the various possible components of the project, such as plantings, grading, lighting, water features and construction material selections, culminating into a proposal for installation.

Once the proposal for installation is agreed upon, your landscape architect works closely with the production team to execute the design. We keep in consistent communication with you throughout the implementation phase. We coordinate any subcontractors that may be involved with the project and our experienced field crew works diligently and professionally to see the design to completion.

Once your landscape project is completed, your landscape architect provides you with instructions on how to care for it in the first year following installation. And during that time, he is available to answer any questions, concerns or thoughts you may have as your new landscape gets established.

American Gardens is unique in that completion of your landscape project does not necessarily mean the end of American Gardens’ services to you. Many of our clients choose to contract with us for on-going maintenance of their landscape.

We offer such subsequent client service options as:
• regular weeding and trimming/pruning programs,
• spring and fall clean-up,
• fall bulb planting,
• exterior holiday decorating,
• special event (weddings, graduation parties, etc.) landscaping

Many clients also come back to us to make subsequent landscape design additions or enhancements, as their initial landscape design—and their life—evolves.