Exterior Worlds
Landscape Design
Request a consultation

Landscape Design

Have you cut out and collected pictures of great landscaping ideas, but now wonder how to actually put them onto your own property? Have you wanted to capture the vision of a stately French mansion on your property in Houston, Texas? Would you like to know whether the plants you’ve admired in European and New England countryside estates will grow on the Texas coastal plains?

If so, you need the services of an experienced residential landscape professional. A competent landscape designer or landscape architect takes you through the entire design development process, which includes: consultation and program development, analysis of the existing site, conceptual landscaping planning, construction documentation and permitting. And then on towards turning the vision in your mind from virtual reality to actual reality.

Analysis of the Site
An essential part of the initial consultation with your landscape professional or landscape architect is a walk around your property. Here is where you get to share your overall vision, detail your wants and needs and desires. It should be a free-flowing discussion about aesthetics, which includes your likes and dislikes of materials, preferences on arrangements—all the “wouldn’t it be nice if…” things you’ve been considering.

Try to be as specific as you can. For example, you may want a deck to seat a party of ten people or a large lawn area on which your three- and five-year-old can play with your Labrador retriever. This detailed information will be brought together by your residential landscape designer or landscape architect to create a program of uses. The program organizes uses by their relationship to one another, much like the inside flow of your home. In fact, the architecture and flow of your home should relate to the architecture and flow of your landscaping. Understanding these relationships and interpreting them well separates the artist-architectural designer from a landscape horticulturalist-contractor.

Residential Landscaping Design
The next step in the design process develops out of the meeting notes, site analysis, program of uses, and the design professional’s experience. At this conceptual level, the designer or architect conveys the overall design intent, such as the general use areas and their sizes, swimming pools and other hardscapes, outdoor kitchens and outdoor fountains, lawn areas, and plantings. This phase will also be the time when it is determined which wish list items are possible on the site and which are not. An overall cost study is developed from the conceptual design as well.

Moving Forward with your Design:
Once you have agreed on the overall design intent, sizes of use areas, general material selections and their applications, you are ready to begin the landscaping design development and construction phase. The documentation for this phase can be broken down into three groups: 1) design drawings for permitting. 2) drawings to convey final design intent and material selections for you and the installation contractor 3) drawings, called construction documents, with specifications for materials, specifications for their installation and installation methods.

These drawings may be accompanied by a full package of additional drawings to include an existing site survey, tree disposition and elevation plan, tree preservation plan, demolition plan, swimming pool plan, landscape drainage systems, irrigation systems, hardscape plan including outdoor kitchen and outdoor water fountains, landscape planting plan, landscape lighting plan, and construction details for the above plans.

As for permits, each city has its own unique requirements for landscape plan approvals. The norm is a submittal of the entire permitting package to be approved or rejected by a committee board. For this reason, it is important to hire a landscaping company that is fluent in these areas, one who knows what vital information to include, such as lot coverage ratios, engineered drainage plans, pool fencing layout and specifications. It is equally important to omit unnecessary information that could create confusion or send up a red flag that would keep the project from getting approved. A knowledgeable residential landscape professional or landscape architect helps win approval as quickly as possible.

Garden Design and the End Results
Whether your project is a simple landscaping design that only encompasses landscape planting or is a complex construction package, it is vital that you hire a landscape designer or landscape architect that is competent in the skill sets detailed here. For your satisfaction, it is also important to distinguish between off-the-shelf landscaping design and a designer who can reflect your unique style. Always ask to see a portfolio and visit the website to determine if the landscaping company under consideration has the sense of style you appreciate and is one who can design a landscape that complements your home and lifestyle.

Additionally, it is highly recommended that you utilize a design company that not only does the design work, but also performs project management and landscaping installation. There is a world of difference between someone who has great ideas and another person with great ideas who also knows the availability and best use of local materials, local contractors and their methods of construction, overall cost and budget development, and can then maintain the finished product. In short, you want a designer or architect who can deliver a design solution that flourishes in the Houston climate over the long term.

Since 1987, Exterior Worlds has been making dream landscapes come true throughout the greater Houston area including the Memorial Villages, Tanglewood, River Oaks, West University, Bellaire and the greater Houston area since 1987. Call 713-827-2255 and ask about its residential landscape design services.

Do-it-yourself landscaping

Do-it-yourself landscaping is never as simple as it looks. Websites, how-to videos, and magazines make it look so easy. When you actually get out in the yard and start working, whoever, you run into all sorts of unforeseen variables that challenge you at every turn. This is where working with an online landscape design expert fromExterior Worlds can help you. It gives you the best of both worlds. You receive
more

Frequently Asked Questions about Online Landscaping Ideas

What websites can I go to in order to get online landscaping ideas? Think about the elements you want to see when you walk outside into your front or back yard. Ask yourself some honest questions and give yourself the freedom to use your imagination for a second. Do you want a patio just for you and a special someone? Do you want a swimming pool? What types of flowers
more

Online Exterior Design

Online exterior design gives cost effective landscape development with a remote expert in botanical science and outdoor architecture. This plan can then be sourced to a local landscaping company in your community, who can better add value to your property with a pre-existing diagram. The online exterior design plan is a very detailed document. It is a drawn-to-scale representation of your existing lot, with a scale drawing of your house.
more

Online Landscaper Creates Master Plan For Odtdoor Living

Many clients who approach us with interest ask a very fair question: “What can you do as an online landscaper that a local landscape service in my community cannot do?” This is a question we like to answer because it helps us establish a clear picture of what an online landscaper really does. An online landscaper develops a master plan that includes everything necessary to the creation of a true
more

Online Landscaping

Online landscaping lets you combine the design skills of an established landscaping professional with the option of implementing all or part of it as a do-it-yourself landscaping project. Online landscaping begins with a consultation where the designer gains a thorough understanding of your home architecture. Your home’s architecture is composed of a myriad number of geometric motifs. It is these motifs we will then follow when we create your
more

Houston Landscape Designers

Houston Texas is one of the most difficult and challenging climates to design and build landscape gardens in the country. We have heavily compacted soils that when inundated with torrential rains suffocate plants and low lying flood areas that if not installed with a proper drainage system could flood a house. In Houston our temperature extremes from summer drought and 100 degree days to humid fall and spring weather causes plant
more

Houston Landscaping Designers

Exterior Worlds fields a team of experienced Houston Landscaping Designers who work in every major neighborhood of our metropolitan area. Our plans are characterized by a unique, and highly personalized, blend of advanced consultation and planning, impeccable garden designs, hardscapes, and landscape architecture. The goal of each project is twofold. On a practical level, our services aim to create an interconnected, interrelated network of functional outdoor living environments that you
more

Urban Landscaping

The overall objective of any landscape design, including urban landscaping, is to create a space that breathes with the home and has a relationship to its surroundings. It should reflect your visual desires and function together in every aspect. An urban yard or garden comes with big challenges. Perhaps your property backs up to the two-story blank wall of a neighboring townhouse. Maybe the space is all straight lines and
more

Outdoor Living Space

In one very real sense, the entire purpose of residential landscape design is to create outdoor living space. After all, what do you intend to actually DO with your landscape after it is complete. Is not the whole point of the endeavor to then live outdoors as much as possible within the structure, beauty, and form of a Houston landscape that has been turned into truly refined and comfortable outdoor
more

Outdoor Garden Design

Outdoor garden design is one of the most important elements of truly superb residential landscape design. In many ways it represents the heart and soul of Houston outdoor living, and it warrants thoughtful consideration and systematic, deliberate planning on the part of both homeowners and landscape designers. The actual style of the gardens installed will be ultimately based upon the intent the landscape as a functional and aesthetic unity, and
more