You do not need a license or degree to call yourself a landscape designer.   Landscape designers come from all different backgrounds.  Some are college educated, some are nationally certified through the Association of Professional Landscape Designers, while others have no formal training at all. This raises a question if you are a consumer.  Who do you hire?  Someone looking to hire a designer should find a designer you have good rapport with.  Read the information on their website and look at their portfolio.  Do you agree with their philosophy.  Their portfolio will give you an indication of the scope of work that company has completed.  A good designer will be able to create an environment which will fit your house's architectural style as well as meeting your family's needs.  Decide if you want a self taught designer or someone who had formal training and experience.  Again, look at their portfolio.  Do you find their overall designs and plant combinations pleasing to the eye. 

Many companies handle design in one of three ways.  Some companies give their plans away for free, some companies charge for plans but will credit a percentage of the price back if you hire them for the installation, and some companies charge for their plans without crediting anything back for agreement of the installation.  Companies giving away free designs obviously know what there time and designs are worth.  These plans do not deal with design or space but are no more than ill conceived planting plans which lead to a boring landscape with poor plant selections,        non-existent plant combinations and poor plant placement.  Does the all too common azalea in a sea of mulch come to mind?  Most times these “designers” do not have a design background but offer this free service to get landscape work.  Design is not just putting plants into the ground.  Design is about marrying house and landscape.  A good designer will create a garden which will compliment the architectural style of your house.  A good design will incorporate plant communities which will play off each other with contrasting leaf textures, colors and varying bloom times to create a pleasing environment with multi seasonal interest.  In my mind, there are a lot of companies designing landscapes which do not take into consideration the most basic design principals when designing their clients gardens.  The finished projects seem to have no unity between house and garden and plant placement and plant combinations are non existent.  

There are other companies that will charge an up front fee for designs and credit part of that fee back to you if they receive the landscape installation contract.  It is common to operate in this manner.   Over the years we have found that the installation estimates from these companies are usually padded to recoup “free” design time.  As the saying goes “There is no such thing as a free lunch”.  Designing a landscape can take a considerable amount of time.  You will pay for their time in the landscape estimate or in the case of the free design, you will pay with a poorly planned landscape. 

Designing Eden LLC falls under the last category.  We are experts in the field and charge for plans.  We do not credit any part of the design fee back to a client if they eventually become landscape clients.  We are up front with what things cost and we do not give our time or expertise away for free. 

For most of the year, we are only interested in clients who are looking for both the landscape design and installation.  Design work does not keep our laborers busy.  Please plan ahead.  The best case scenario is a client who starts the design process in the fall for a spring/summer installation.  At times, we do take on design only work.  The fall/winter is typically best for us. 

Prospective clients are always asking what a design costs.  The price of a design is determined by the size of the project, the amount of detail which the project entails and how much detail you are looking for in the design.  At the initial meeting a price will be quoted for the design phase.  Changes and revisions will be charged at an hourly rate.  You decide how much or how little design work you need to feel comfortable completing your project.  Of course, we have the capabilities to complete a fully rendered plan like the one pictured below, but you might not need that much design time.  Below are two examples of designs which were produced for clients.   The good news is that no matter how much or how little design time you choose, you still get some of the best design experience Connecticut has to offer:  Profile

On Home and Garden Television:  Fifteen years ago homeowners would live with the builder installed landscape or the landscape they inherited when they bought their house and lived with the same poorly planned minimalistic landscape until the plants were to the roof.  Not anymore.  HGTV seems to be having a great impact on the outdoor environments surrounding peoples homes these days.  Shows like Groundbreakers has created a frenzy within the landscape market.  People are recognizing the benefits landscapes have on houses by bringing the outdoors in and extending the living spaces right out into the garden.  These ideas aren’t new of course.  The famous architects and landscape architects of the past century have been incorporating these ideas for years.  All you have to do is look at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater built in 1937 or the work of Thomas Church to see where these concept’s began.  Show’s like Groundbreakers show three different companies presenting different designs to the homeowners.  Husband and wife discuss the pro’s and con’s and choose one company.  That’s all well and good.  What the show tends to leave out is that someone is paying for those plans or the companies offer those plans for free in exchange for national television exposure.  In the real world you will be paying for each of those plans if you hire reputable designer’s.  You could hire 100 different designer’s and each will give you a different design.  Hiring multiple designers to design something you might not necessarily want or like would be foolish.  A more realistic approach would be to have some goals you would like to accomplish and then find a designer whose work you like.  Be able to convey what you want through pictures from travel, books and magazines.  Write lists of things you like and dislike. A good designer will then be able to custom tailor a landscape to your specific tastes and needs.

What is design imaging?  Design imagining is a tool being offered by a lot of companies right now.  The process involves taking a picture of your house and placing photo-realistic plants in front of the original picture to create a picture of the so called finished landscape.  We feel design imagining has it’s place within the green industry, know doubt,  but it does not replace design as most companies use the program.  Design imagining helps people visualize the design.  The problem is, it’s a one dimensional picture.  Design is about creating space, rooms, vistas, axis’ and design imagining programs, at this point, can not replicate that.  Design imaging makes everyone who learns the program a “landscape designer” when in fact a lot of companies using the program have very little design experience at all.  As a consumer, I am warning you to be leery of someone selling you a landscape by using strictly an image because in all but the smallest projects the landscape design will most likely be poorly planned.  Hire a company who use’s the program as a sales tool.  Providing you a landscape design which deals with space, and also an image which will give you a one dimensional idea of what the finished product will look like.  Imaging is fast and photo realistic, but it’s not a design tool.

Here are some of the local towns we serve within Fairfield and Litchfield Counties:

Designing Eden LLC

8 West Meetinghouse Road

New Milford, CT 06776

Tel. 860-350-5162

info@designingeden.com