What a Landscape Design Actually Buys You
Most people call us wanting a patio, or a fix for the water pooling by the back steps. Design comes up second, usually as a question about whether it can be skipped.
Sometimes it can. A straight driveway replacement does not need a plan. But the moment a project touches more than one part of the yard, grading and a patio, or planting and drainage, the pieces start affecting each other, and that is where money disappears. A patio set at the wrong elevation sends water
toward the foundation. Beds planted before the grading settles get dug up again.
A design is how you find that out on paper, while changes still cost nothing.
What You Get in an Atlanta Landscape Design
A measured base plan
House corners, slopes, mature trees, utilities and the direction water actually runs, drawn to scale.Everything after this depends on it being right.
Layout drawings
Where the patio sits, how wide the walkway runs, where the wall steps down. Drawn to scale so you can see the space instead of imagining it.
A planting plan
Species, sizes and quantities chosen for the light and soil your yard actually has. Georgia shade and clay rule out a lot of what looks good on a nursery tag. Where the soil needs amending before anything goes in, that is written into the plan too.
Materials and finishes
Paver style, stone, color, edge detail, all picked before anything is ordered, so what arrives is what you
approved.
A priced scope
Materials, quantities and cost, line by line. A drawing without a number attached is only half a design.
Front Yard, Back Yard, or the Whole Property
Not every design covers the whole lot. Most start with one problem area and grow from there.
Front yard design
Curb appeal, but also the practical half: beds that frame the house instead of swallowing it, a walkway people actually use, and grading that keeps water off the foundation. Usually the smallest design and the
fastest return.
Back yard design
The one people live in. Patio, seating, shade, fire, cooking, screening from the neighbors, somewhere for the dog. Back yard design is mostly a question of zones and how you move between them.
Whole property design
Front, back, side yards and drainage as one plan. Costs more to draw, saves more to build, because nothing gets installed twice or torn out to make room for the next phase.
Phased design
You do not have to build it all at once. We draw the full plan, then break it into stages you can pay for in the order that makes sense: drainage and grading first, hardscape next, planting last. Nothing in stage three
undoes stage one.
How the Design Process Runs
1. Free on-site consultation
We meet you at the property and go over slope, drainage, sun, soil, access and utilities. You describe how you want to use the space, and we say straight away if something will not work where you picture it.
2. Measurements and base plan
We survey what is there and draw it to scale before designing anything on top of it.
3. Concept and layout
The first pass, where things go and how the space flows. This is the stage to change your mind, and it costs nothing to do so.
4. Plans, materials and a price
Final drawings, plant list, material selections and a written scope with quantities and cost. Nothing gets ordered until you have signed off on it.
5. We build it
Same company, same people. No handoff to a contractor who was not in the room when the plan was
made.
What Landscape Design Costs in Atlanta
Our on-site consultation is free, and the estimate that follows it costs nothing either. The design itself is quoted separately, because a single-area layout and a whole-property plan are not remotely the same amount of work. You see that number before we start drawing, not after.
What moves it is the size of the property, how much of it the plan covers, and how much survey work the site needs before anything can be drawn to scale.
Designing for Georgia Clay, Shade and Summer Storms
A plan drawn without Atlanta in mind will fail here, and you will find out in the second year.
Red clay holds water instead of letting it through, then shrinks and cracks by August. So grade and drainage get decided before layout, not patched afterward. Much of the metro is shaded by old hardwood and pine, and half the “full sun” plants on a nursery tag will sulk in your yard and die in the third summer.
That is why the planting plan starts with where the light actually falls.
Our landscape designers work the same soil every week, in Gwinnett, North Fulton, DeKalb and East Cobb. None of this shows in a rendering. All of it shows in year five.
Our Work
See Our Landscape Design Projects
Plans we’ve designed and built for homes across Metro Atlanta.
Landscape Design Questions
