Call (250) 812 6112
Call (250) 812 6112
Good landscaping around here goes a lot further than planting trees and laying stone. The projects that still look right in year five are the ones where somebody thought about the site before they thought about the plants.
It feels like the opposite. Paying to have something drawn before anything gets built reads like an extra line item. In practice it is the line item that stops the expensive mistakes: the patio that sits in shade from three in the afternoon, the wall that was never going to hold the slope behind it, the drainage nobody planned until water started arriving at the back door.
A design gives you two things. You see the finished space in 2D and 3D before committing, and you get the build cost attached to it, so you are making a decision on facts instead of a feeling.
Drainage. The North Okanagan does freeze, thaw and then dump water down a slope. Where that water goes is designed, or it is discovered.
Sun. A seating area that is perfect in June can be unusable by four o'clock in August, or in shade for the whole shoulder season. Which side of the house you put things on matters more than what you put there.
Slope. Most lots around Vernon have some. Levels, steps and retaining are what turn a slope into usable space, and they are structural decisions, not decorative ones.
How you actually use it. Not how a magazine uses it. If the honest answer is a firepit, somewhere to put a barbecue, and grass the kids can play on, a design should say that rather than sell you a water feature.
Kitchens, firepits, patios, pergolas and lighting get bought separately and end up looking it. Designed together they share levels, materials and sightlines, and the whole thing reads as one space that belongs to the house.
Lighting is the one most often left to the end. Planned in, it extends how long you can use the space and picks out the trees, stone and water you already paid for. Added afterwards, it is cable stapled to a fence.
A drawing is only worth something if the people building it were in the room when it was drawn. When design and build sit with one crew, the details that get lost in a handover, the reason a level is what it is, where the drainage runs, why that base is deeper, stay with the job.