Landscape Design for Virginia, Maryland and DC
It’s official, 2012 is amazing and I’m hiring! The ad is up at Craigslist, but here is the text: Revolutionary Gardens is experiencing rapid growth and I am looking to hire a part-time (contract) landscape design assistant. We do design and consulting for homeowners, builders, and contractors throughout the DC metro area. Responsibilities: – draft [...]
A few weeks ago I posted that a property I designed and oversaw in Fredericksburg was going to be on the garden tour Tuesday, April 24th. After lots of running around and frantic work to make it as ready for prime time as I could (the plants were just installed last year), I learned a [...]
I meet with a fair number of homeowners who say “I either want a firepit or a fireplace.” This uncertainty is actually a great place to start discussing how they’re going to use the space and how much they’d like to invest in the space, because an outdoor fireplace and a firepit are used very [...]
I was meeting with a client this weekend and I asked if they had plans to add landscape lighting to the backyard. She replied “oh yes, and we already had the wire installed.” People, don’t do this. Pre-wiring makes a lot of sense inside the home to prevent the alarm installer or cable guy from [...]
As my business has grown I’ve celebrated each and every milestone. Some are small and some are really exciting and kind of a big deal to me. One example is that on Tuesday, April 24th, one of my 2011 projects will be featured on the Fredericksburg tour portion of Historic Garden Week in Virginia. How [...]
When I was designing landscapes in Arizona, one option we had available to us was travertine marble tile. These were actual tiles – typically 12″x12″ and less than a half inch think – so they had to be laid in a mortar bed on a concrete slab. Shortly after landing in Virginia in 2005, I [...]
Garden product pitchmen (pitchpersons?) love landscape designers. We’re often the most trusted advisors our clients have for their beloved plants, and this is seen as an easy opportunity to recruit us as salespeople. I can’t tell you how many Dr. Mama Earth’s Happy Fluffy Kitty Mega Awesome Somewhat Organic-ish Plant Food vendors have offered to [...]
How weird has the weather been this winter? And here we are, two weeks into March and they’re calling for 70s and 80s depending where in Virginia you are. Obviously this is going to affect plants. The Garden Professors talk briefly about these unseasonable temps and I’ve had several folks ask me about the possible [...]
I cam across this question as a discussion of architecture on a blog, and it first it seemed kind of silly. I mean, this is a service industry, and design is a service. Right? As I thought about it I realized that a lot of folks actually view landscape design as a product. They need [...]
Deer. At times, they can be really cute. They don’t do cute things to plants, though. Deer are a persistent problem in the landscapes and gardens of the DC metro area. I’ve heard from biologists that because this winter was so mild, we’re probably going to see an upswing in the deer population. Given that [...]
