The Land & Water Design team will custom design your outdoor living space to suit your unique taste and individual needs. Our design process begins with a complimentary visit to your home. Our experienced landscape architect will discuss with you the design style and components you have in mind and your overall budget. This will help define the scope of services and generate some preliminary ideas. We will share with you design ideas for your home and this will give you the opportunity to see some examples of our work and answers any questions you may have.

After the appointment, you will receive a design proposal with the scope of services from your discussion and the Design Questionnaire you filled out. When you decide to move forward, we will start the design.

We provide several drawings during the different stages of the design process.

The process starts with a base plan created by measuring your site, including the house and all buildings, existing hardscape and trees and recording the elevation changes of your lot. We take photographs and combine this information with your certified house location survey, to produce the base plan. A house location survey shows property boundaries and usually will show all the existing utility easements, and right of ways and is available from most escrow companies, or county zoning offices.

Conceptual Plan

The conceptual plan, also called the "preliminary plan", is prepared in a 2D-computer aided design (CAD) program. It will show your entire property with all the new elements and existing elements that are to remain. The drawing will be in a plan view drawn to scale and will reflect the best use of your property to meet your unique needs and desires.

Once the conceptual plan is approved, on difficult sites with extensive grade changes, we will produce a grading and drainage plan by measuring elevations of your house and your lot. The grading and drainage plan will provide information needed during construction to control water drainage, keeping patio and walkways clear and storm water directed away from the house. In some cases, such as when building a pool, a professional civil engineer will be required to prepare a topography study, grading plan and soil analysis to meet county building permit requirements.

Once the conceptual plan is approved, we will provide you with a proposal to produce the construction drawings used to build your project. The construction drawings are considered the final phase of the design process and include a set of plans that shows all the hardscape elements of the design. This last set of plans depending on the elements can include construction details, dimension layout plan, sections, elevations, framing and footing plan, lighting and electrical plan.

3D Perspective

We also offer a service where we can create your design using a 3D modeling software. You'll be able to see your design come to life. This dynamic 3D design allows you to do a walkthrough of your future landscape. For a visual effect conceptual imaging or perspectives are very useful and can help with making decisions.

The landscape planting plan shows your conceptual plan with new and existing plant material with size and quantity. A plant list accompanies the plan with pictures, genus, species and notes about each of the specified plants.

We can assist you in writing a set of specs and evaluating contractor bids. This can be helpful if you intend to have your project bid by multiple companies. If there are not some sort of guidelines written, you could very easily get three bids for the project that vary greatly in price. It is always best to compare oranges to oranges. We can write a set of specifications and can also handle the bidding, and administration of your project.

Homeowner Associations and County Zoning/Planning Offices often require additional materials for their approval process. We can provide you with these materials.

Reviewing the project as it is being built can assure you a satisfied outcome. We can be available for consultation to answer contractor questions or to solve issues and ensure that the construction complies with the plans as designed by Land & Water Design.

After the soil has been prepped and the plant material is ready to be installed, it is helpful to have the landscape architect who designed your landscape to come out to your site the day of the planting to assist the contractor in the laying out of the plant materials.