A landscaper installs and maintains plantings, often working from someone else's plan or none at all. A landscape architect designs the whole landscape as a work of design and engineering — the grading, drainage, and circulation that form its bones, the hardscape, pools, and terraces that make it livable, and the planting that brings it to life — all composed together and rooted in the specifics of your site. We think about how the land relates to the house, the views, the climate, and how you'll actually live outside, and we produce the plans that make it real. We work happily alongside excellent installation crews, but the design, the structure, and the vision are ours.

Typically the whole property, because the parts only work when they're designed together. A beautiful planting laid over bad grading, awkward circulation, or a pool in the wrong place will never feel right. So we design the full landscape as one coherent place — the grades and drainage, the hardscape and pools and terraces, the paths and walls, and the planting — always in relationship to the house and the wider country. That said, we take on focused projects too, like a garden, a pool and terrace, or a specific area of the grounds. If you have a whole estate or a single garden in mind, either can be a fit.

Absolutely — and in this climate it should. Native and climate-adapted planting, thoughtfully composed, can be every bit as lush and beautiful as a thirsty conventional garden while using a fraction of the water and far less maintenance, and it looks like it belongs here rather than imported from somewhere wetter. We're deeply versed in this kind of design, and we combine the right plant palette with smart grading, soil, and irrigation so the landscape establishes well and thrives for the long term. Sustainability and beauty aren't a trade-off in our work; done right, the low-water landscape is the more beautiful one, and it grows richer with every year.

Yes — the hardscape is core to what we do, not an add-on. Pools, terraces, walls, steps, paths, outdoor kitchens and fireplaces, and the grading and drainage beneath them are the architecture of the ground plane, and they determine how a landscape is used and how it lasts. We design them in honest materials, in proportion to the house and the site, and integrated with the planting and the land so the whole thing reads as one considered place rather than a collection of features. We produce the detailed drawings and coordinate the specialists who build them, protecting the design and the quality through construction.

Landscape architectural fees are typically a design fee based on the scope and scale of the project, sometimes with a percentage tied to construction cost, and after an initial conversation and a look at your property we provide a clear, transparent framework. Work of this kind is an investment that pays back — in a property that lives far better, uses less water, needs less maintenance, and holds and grows its value, especially in the wine country where the grounds are so central. We design to your budget and are candid about numbers from the start. Good landscape design is rarely the cheapest option and almost always the most valuable one.

Our studio is in the town of Sonoma, and we design landscapes throughout Sonoma and Napa — Sonoma, Healdsburg, Napa, Glen Ellen, Kenwood, and St. Helena are all regular territory. This is our home ground, and knowing its light, soils, climate, native plants, and the excellent craftspeople who build here is essential to landscapes that truly belong. For a compelling property in another part of Northern California wine country or the coast, we're glad to talk. If you have land in the wine country you want to become a place, we'd love to hear about it.