This was a great Alexandria landscape design project. Sometimes you roll up to a new potential client’s home and you see something that makes you say, “we’re totally working together.” That was the case with this project. As I drove…
Over the years I’ve had hundreds of clients come my way, asking for a patio or a kitchen or a retaining wall or new plantings or… whatever. Some have even considered materials and colors and finishes. No matter the excitement,…
There are no shortage of posts out there telling you when you should hire a landscape designer. Heck, I wrote one, “Do I really need a landscape designer?” way back in 2010. And they’re all awesome and if you want…
Last week I wrote my post “What is it like to be a landscape designer?” and it occurred to me that every designer has come via a different path and does things a little bit differently. Literally every designer. Give…
I was a voracious reader as a child. It didn’t matter what you put in front of me, if it had letters imprinted upon it I would read it. Books, magazines, cereal boxes, newspapers, shampoo bottles, I read it. I…
Ah, autumn. Crisp, cool nights, apple cider donuts at the farmers markets, the crunch of leaves underfoot… and the infernal, deafening, aggravating noise that accompanies every fall season. I refer, of course, to the din of people whining about leaf…
Several months ago I got a call to do a Bristow landscape design project (for those not in the know, Bristow is a little town in Prince William County, Virginia). The client, Janice, wanted to take the boring expanse of…
Pizza is good. Pizza done on the grill is better. The absolute best pizza you could hope to have is made in a wood-fired pizza oven. We all know that. But why? The main reason a wood oven does so…
One of the benefits of being quite possibly The Most Approachable Guy in the World is I get into a lot of conversations. When these conversations are with folks from the gardening community, and the subject of native plants arises, it…
