Personalize your outdoor space and turn heads with a bespoke garden design. The signature quality of bespoke garden design is that it is made to measure to the unique characteristics of your landscape and tailored to your specifications; it suits you well.
Achieving a tailored design begins with communication. What’s your dream? How would you describe the mental picture that you have of your landscape project before hiring a landscape designer?
Conveying your ideas can sometimes get lost in translation.
B. Rocke Landscaping
Bespoke design is tailored to the client's specifications. The newly installed edging on these stone steps was replaced willingly when the client wanted something else.
Jeff Helps, a Winnipeg homeowner, recalls that it took almost two years before he and his wife, Jean, decided on a landscape designer for their project. Helps knew that he wanted to break up the flatness of some of the terrain in his landscape and add some evergreens for year-round colour and interest.
His wish list included a water feature in his backyard as well as a gazebo and deck for entertaining.
He also wanted to create a more interesting front entranceway that would enhance the curb appeal of his property.
Obtaining a quote was the easy part.
"The problem was in the amount of time spent relaying information back and forth," Helps says, "and trying to visualize how some of the design suggestions would look in our landscape."
B. Rocke Landscaping
Be involved with the design of your landscape project, but know when to let the experts do their thing. Ponds and waterfalls are complicated to design and require extra maintenance.
Eventually, a friend referred Helps to Byron Rocke, owner of B. Rocke Landscaping.
Rocke says it is important for the designer to listen to every detail of what a client hopes to achieve. Determining a client’s style preference is influenced by their home’s exterior and interior architecture, as well as their stage of life and lifestyle.
Locating windows and lines of sight from neighbouring properties identifies a place in the landscape that brings more privacy. Practical considerations include determining the grade and slope of the property and the direction of the landscape watershed as well as determining sun and shade patterns in different areas.
The esthetic of making a space attractive from every angle is enhanced, Rocke says, when there is a sunny, cozy spot in which to relax during cooler times of the year such as fall and spring, but also a shady or sheltered area to escape the heat of summer.
B. Rocke Landscaping
Personalize your space with the addition of a pergola and a slight change in elevation makes a small space more interesting.
The addition of screens, pergolas and trees achieve privacy and can be used to personalize a space, Rocke says.
"A client wants their designer to create a design that is different from the suburban norm," Rocke says.
The designer, he says, needs to think outside the box, create beauty and, at the same time, meet the client’s functional and budgetary goals.
Helps wanted a water feature that would look as though it were a natural part of the landscape. He wanted to ensure, too, that the mature oak trees on his property would not be adversely affected by any changes in grade or by close proximity to areas that were being developed.
Rocke says the dream of having a water feature is at the top of many people’s wish lists. He gives his clients as much information as possible in terms of the type of maintenance required and how to winterize their water feature.
B. Rocke Landscaping
By removing overgrown shrubs and installing a new front step and stone retaining walls, this property's curb appeal was greatly enhanced.
Accessibility to your designer as well as a willingness by the designer to listen to the homeowner’s concerns, questions or suggestions is important. Helps enjoyed the design-build process and says there were a few refinements along the way.
"There was no hesitation by the design team if my wife or I made a suggestion or asked for something to be changed," Helps says. When new stone steps were added to the front entranceway, for example, Helps wasn’t happy with how the edging material looked. He spoke to the site manager who agreed. The cut stone was removed and the step was redone.
In another example, a gravel footing in a newly installed dog run needed to be removed and replaced with something more comfortable.
"There were some things, though, such as the water feature that we just had to take on faith," Helps says. "I had no concept of how a huge hole that was dug in my backyard was going to be transformed into a pond and waterfall. We needed to allow the design team to just do their thing and trust that the outcome would be what we wanted."
The water feature was designed into an existing elevation. It was a complex process that required considerable skill and expertise. For the look of a natural outcropping, the area around the water feature was dug out so that one-third of each of the hand-picked, angular granite boulders was below ground level.
Often, a landscape project represents a significant investment. It’s important for the client to control their project budget. Rocke believes in providing a phased quote that typically starts with the main wish-list items and the infrastructure. Everything else is listed à la carte so the client can plan their project in phases.
In one example of a phased project, Rocke started by redesigning a driveway for a client. Next, the clients wanted suggestions on how to tie their driveway into the style of their home’s architecture, which included an attractive brick facade and a series of pillars. The property had numerous overgrown shrubs, which Rocke removed to visually open up space in front of the clients’ home, enhancing the view from both inside and out.
Rocke designed a new front step with longer treads, which made for more comfortable stairs that were more like platforms. He built tiered stone retaining walls that eliminated the need for a railing on the exterior stairs. The linear lines of the retaining walls and front steps were softened by the addition of plants such as Autumn Joy sedum and Russian Sage. Large containers situated on opposite sides of the front door are clearly visible at street level for added curb appeal.
For the backyard design, Rocke created two conversation areas on two separate levels using paving stone. The clients were concerned that the stone surface might settle in 10 or 15 years. Rocke installed a concrete pad beneath the stone supported by screw piles that go into the ground about two to three metres.
"The piles are well below the frost line," Rocke says, "and will prevent the stone from heaving as a result of the freeze-thaw cycle."
The homeowners plan to eventually add an outdoor kitchen to the upper area, which was designated as a dining area because of its close proximity to the house. Accessibility and the best utilization of an area based on its situation and relation to surrounding elements are all part of good landscape design.
Not all projects are dramatic reinventions of an entire landscape. Sometimes it’s a matter of replacing a worn deck with a more contemporary design or the addition of a well-designed pergola that has the power to transform the esthetics of a space and increase its functionality. Adding even the slightest change in elevation makes a small space more interesting.
It’s your project and your piece of paradise. Bespoke landscape design, Rocke says, will make you feel comfortable and at home.
colleenizacharias@gmail.com
