Landscape Design Perfectly Compliments New Home

Beautiful New Custom Home Demanded an Elevated Landscape

Our clients were in the midst of building their dream when they reached out to us regarding their front yard. They were constructing a beautiful, grand residence that was to be a towering figure on a spacious corner lot. They knew that they wanted a landscape design that fit the scale of the home. They also knew that they wanted trees that would anchor the landscape & make it feel like an extension of the impressiveness of the home. We were super excited to bring this vision to life & we set out to develop their perfect front yard.

First, we evaluated at the elevations of the lot. In reality, aside from the towering house, the lot was very flat. We knew this had to change. Changing elevations can help to disrupt the flatness of a site & give it naturally more interest. We constructed a series of accent walls & large raised planters to break up the elevation of the site. We used a combination of stucco & stone finish to give the walls a connection to the residence. This variety in colors & textures also creates a beautiful contrast of rugged stone & smooth stucco as your eyes move along the length of the walls. We also incorporated columns near the front entry walk to compliment the home’s grand columns.

Next, we needed to decide what variety of tree would be best for the raised planters. These raised planters would be the main anchors to the front yard & therefore this selection was critical. We were looking for a few specific traits in the variety we chose. Specifically, we wanted a tree species that offered beautiful branching, was available in size & scale that would fit the home, & lastly our clients wanted an evergreen species of tree. After much deliberation & conversation, we all agreed that field-grown Olive tree was the best selection.

Our designers traveled to an Olive tree farm to hand-select the two Olive trees that were to be incorporated into the project. We felt strongly that due to the visual importance of these two trees, our designers had to be ones to select them from a field of hundreds. The trees were carefully pruned & dug to prepare for transport. Eventually, they made the long trip south to Bakersfield & our crews set the specimen trees in the large custom planters. Once these trees were set, the vision for the front yard was clearly coming together.

After these gorgeous trees were installed, we focused on developing the rest of the planting palette. We created a rich planting palette that offers a wide variety of bloom colors, textures, & shades of green. Our clients were big fans of Japanese Maples so we took advantage of the northern exposure & incorporated a number of gorgeous Red Japanese Maples. The clients did desire a grass footprint but we made s