Native Flower Arrangements

California native flower arrangement (Image via CNPS)

We love a good flower arrangement. We also love native plants. Why not a native arrangement, then?

Many US-native plants work fabulously in floral arrangements, and are easy to incorporate into a home planting design.  Remember, floral arrangements include more than just flowers. Foliage and branches of all types lend crucial character and fun texture to any arrangement. 

Below, we’ll walk you through some of our favorite native species for floral arrangements, along with a few tips for creating gorgeous, regionally unique bouquets.

A flower arrangement of Northeastern native plants via Remodelista.

Why bother making a native bouquet? 

• Save money. Commercially sold flowers are steeply marked up. Save a buck and grow your own!

• Help the environment. Most flowers sold in the US are flown in from South America, generating major environmental impact, from water and pesticide use, to carbon emissions, to plastic and organic waste. Home-growing native bouquets turns floral arrangements into an environmental positive, creating habitat and supporting biodiversity while side-stepping the negative impact of imported flowers.

• Regional flair. Who wants to look like everyone else? Regional natives celebrate your home landscape while giving floral arrangements that slightly wild, “just harvested” feel.

A flower arrangement of pollinator-loving plants (Image via Kokoro Garden)

Making the cut

Before you start cutting, make sure you know the proper technique.

• When cutting from the garden, cut early in the morning, when plants are most hydrated.

• When trimming previously-cut plants, cut at an angle, under water, ideally with a sharp floral knife or clippers. For thicker branches, use pruning shears. Don’t use scissors!

• Cut flowers to be no more than two times the height of the vase. One-and-a-half times the vase height is a good target.  

• Put freshly cut plants in fresh cool water right away, and let them rest for at least an hour before arranging. Change water daily, and make sure it remains clear. 

• Clean foliage away from all parts of the stem that will be in contact with water (leaves introduce bacteria to water, leading to discoloration and unpleasant smells).  

Beyond these tips, it’s important to only harvest from your own garden. If you find flowers growing in the wild, let them stay in the wild. 

Image via Absent Gardener

Design Tips

Many principles for designing planting areas also apply to creating floral arrangements. When arranging, consider balance, proportion, rhythm, and visual harmony, as you would in pretty much any visual design task. 

Here are a few other handy tips:

• Pay attention to filler. Filler is a critical source of character and texture, and acts as a framework to support the more showy flowers in an arrangement. Leaves, grasses, evergreen boughs, and even bare stems are all fair game.

• Let there be a star. Not everything can be bold. Use subtler elements to set the stage for a limited number of showstopping blooms. When you limit the number of bold elements, you maximize their impact.

• Consider color families. Limiting yourself to a slice of the rainbow lends character and cohesiveness to a bouquet. Try picking a color range for the flowers - oranges and yellows, blues and purples - and then selecting a foliage range to complement - auburn and tan, silver and blue-green. 

• You can also play with color themes. Make the exterior of one flower match the interior of another.

• Wrap bouquets with humble materials like burlap or recycled brown paper, or tie with chunky string. Materials in earthy colors keep eyes on the plants, where they should be. 

• You can also play with reusable materials as vases. Wine bottles, pitchers, and all manner of tins, cans, and jars can double as vases if they have the right look.

• Our most important tip: don’t overthink it. Trust your gut and your eye to let you know when you’ve arrived at something special. 

Echinacea flowers (Image via HGTV)

Favorite Natives

The best natives for your arrangement will depend on where you live. Many of the species below are native to large swaths of the country, and they all look great in landscape designs and floral arrangements alike.

Flowers:

• Echinacea: E. purpurea is a standout for its big purple flowers, but there are lots of lovely hybrids and colors available. 

• Baptisia australis: False indigo boasts colorful floral spikes in a range of colors (yellow, pink, purple, blue). The seed pods and foliage also look pretty in meadowy bouquets.

• Eupatorium dubium: Joe-Pye weed is an east coast favorite, with creamy pink, fringy flowers. E. dubium ‘Little Joe’ is a popular cultivar.  

• Rudbeckia hirta: Black-eyed Susans are native to prairies across much of the U.S., and lend wildflower charm, striking contrast, and a sunny glow to floral arrangements. 

• Hydrangea arborescens: Chunky blooms ranging from light and yellow-green to white. Made for the spotlight.

• Achillea: Yarrow is available in lots of colors, but we prefer the softer hues to complement its delicate form. 

• Penstemon: Try P. spectabilis in the west, P. digitalis in the east. P. digitalis ‘Husker Red’ has wine red stems that contrast dramatically with its creamy flowers. 

• Monarda: M. fistulosa has a showy, fringy form and creamy pink or lavender coloration, while M. punctata has a more robust, somewhat star-shaped build. Native to much of the U.S. east of the Rockies, with good duration in floral arrangements.

• Eschscholzia californica: The California poppy doesn’t last too long in floral displays, but it glows, and as the state flower, it makes a big announcement of regional identity.

• Romneya coulteri: The Matilija poppy also doesn’t last long as a cut flower, but it’s papery texture and large size make it a fun textural addition to bouquets.

• Mimulus: Monkeyflowers are California natives with big, boldly colored flowers. Cultivars range in color from lemony yellow and creamy orange to purple and burgundy.

• Eriogonum: Buckwheats are a drought tolerant staple of floral arrangements. California buckwheat, E. fasciculatum, has tiny, delicate flowers that lend a dreamy feel to bouquets. The flowers also look fabulous when dried. 

• Symphyotrichum: Asters do wonderfully as cut flowers. S. chilense is a west coast habitat powerhouse with delicate blue, lavender, or white coloration and a big yellow center. S. nova-angliae is the eastern version, with a richer hue.  

White sagebrush

Foliage + Filler:

• Gaultheria shallon: Rounded, heart-shaped, shiny leaves, with a rich green color that turns maroon in the colder seasons. This is a popular choice for floral designers.  

• Magnolia: A southern emblem, magnolia leaves are deep green, large, and glossy, lending chunky texture and rich coloration for brighter flowers to pop against. 

• Chasmanthium latifolium: Native across the south and eastern U.S., northern sea oats have elegant seed heads that lend grassland charm to any arrangement. They dry easily, and last forever.

• Cercis canadensis: Eastern redbud has unique pink blooms directly on its branches, making for a striking feature in a floral arrangement. 

• Sequoia sempervirens: Want your arrangement to scream California? Throw in some redwood foliage.

• Artemisia ludoviciana: Native to much of the U.S., white sagebrush is a stunning, silvery-green perennial with delicate leaves. Blend this in to evoke a sun-bleached, dusty character in floral arrangements. 

• Woodwardia fimbriata: Giant chain fern, a west coast native, has huge fronds that are stunning as character elements in floral arrangements.

• Adiantum capillus-veneris: Southern maidenhair fern has lacy foliage that lends delicacy to bouquets.

• Elymus condensatus ‘Canyon Prince’: A silvery-blue grass from California, Canyon Prince wild rye contrasts nicely with pinks and other pale flowers. Like Artemisia, its color is the main event, though its grassy texture is great for prairie displays.

Modern Cottage Garden Design Ideas

In this Yardzen design deep dive, Yardzen’s Design Director, Kevin Lenhart, shares his favorite features of a modern cottage garden landscape design for a home in California’s East Bay Area.

01 STRONG SENSE OF PLACE

A design succeeds when all its details work together to create a harmonious whole. When everything supports everything else, designs acquire a quality beyond the sum of their parts, expressing a new and potent sense of place. 

This design achieves this trick with grace, transforming the existing yard, with its patchy vegetation, space-constraining railings, and unfocused layout, into a lush and floral retreat modern cottage yard that bowls you over with sensory experience (Learn more about cottage gardens here — one of our favorite landscape trends). It’s not overtly fancy, but it is rich with detail, particularly in the planting design. At the same time, the design maintains strong legibility, high functionality, free-flowing circulation, and a seamless relationship binding home to hardscape to planting. 

How? Many small details add up to this overall impression, but the careful curation and dense arrangement of planting plays a key role. Tree canopy from neighboring properties complements the lush planting design, creating a cumulative sense of isolation from the surrounding world - the yard feels like a private retreat, cozy, calming, and abundant with life.

02 SENSORY DESIGN

Like many traditional cottage gardens, this design offers something for all the senses. 

The gravel patio and paths provide a satisfying crunch underfoot, while rock walls, rough clay pots, and planting spilling into pathways offer a pleasant blend of textures. 

The sound of wind through leaves permeates the entire yard, and is most pronounced in the plant-enveloped gravel patio and densely planted side yard paths. Jasmine, rosemary, lavender, and citrus trees offer lovely smells, not to mention cooking resources. Most significantly, the lush, layered planting, dominated by dense foliage but punctuated by small, bright blooms, forms a rich visual backdrop.

03 ATTENTION TO EDGES

The treatment of edges is a standout feature in this design. 

The deck has broad, unobscured edges that allow for free-flowing circulation and a strong sense of connection to the broader yard. Using a wraparound stair eliminates the need for a guardrail, a clever strategy to strengthen connectivity and expand the perceived sense of space on the deck.

More exciting are the naturalistic edges along the gravel paths, with patches of groundcover planting (Sedum, Dichondra ‘Silver Falls’), low perennials and shrubs (rockrose, lavender), and even decorative boulders blurring the edge of the path. You get the sense that nature is running the show, and the atmosphere is one of softness and abundance.

04 EXTENSION OF HOME

The deck area elegantly bridges indoor and outdoor spaces, offering a hybrid experience - an outdoor living room of sorts. This space maintains the feel of a cottage garden by using materials like gravel, stone, and neutral woods (learn more).

The pergola and fire place are strongly architectural, but the unobstructed sides of the pergola, along with the wraparound deck stair, maintain strong connection to the yard. The deck experience is at once enclosed and wide open, a midway point between the indoor and outdoor experience. 

05 THRESHOLDS + ENCLOSURE

The design does a good job manipulating the perceived sense of space - how open or enclosed an area feels. Juxtaposing enclosed and open spaces creates a dynamic landscape experience, and amplifies the way spaces feel - an open space feels extra open when you access it via an enclosed pathway. 

That’s precisely what this design does. The side path, narrow and densely planted, entered by a vine-laden arbor, enables a dramatic reveal when it rounds the corner to the backyard, with its hillside backdrop, tall tree canopy, and elongated sight lines. The shift from narrow side yard to open backyard was built-in, the design just lent it a lot more drama, to very satisfying effect.

06 WATER-WISE PLANTING

Being a Bay Area design, water consciousness is a must. Luckily, you can have a lush design while remaining drought tolerant. 

This design utilizes plants with low water requirements across the board, blending natives like Muhlenbergia rigens with species from similar dry climates: Australia (kangaroo paw), Mediterranean (lavender, rockrose, rosemary, olive tree), and South Africa (Coleonema ‘Sunset Gold’). 

Drought tolerant groundcovers Dichondra ‘Silver Falls’ and Sedum ‘Goldmoss’ add to the roster, filling gaps between larger planting arrangements to amplify the sense of lushness without ramping up water needs.

Beyond water consciousness, the design manages to sneak in several pollinator crowd-pleasers, including Mexican Bush Sage (Salvia leucantha), along with the aforementioned rosemary and lavender. 

Amidst all this environmental benefit, the plant selection maintains a carefully curated palette of bold golds, soft purples, white flowers, and dusty green foliage. 

GET STARTED WITH YOUR CUSTOM LANDSCAPE DESIGN TODAY

Yardzen's award-winning online landscaping design is tailored to clients in all fifty states in the U.S.

Our design process begins with understanding your space, your aesthetic preferences, and a discussion of your budget and vision to minimize surprises when it comes time to build. 

Our top-notch designers then develop a personalized vision for your yard, shared through 3D renderings, 2D plan drawings, and plant and material lists. Your design will capture the look, feel, and function you are hoping for, all while keeping costs within range. 

Once your design is complete, we'll help you connect with a local contractor from our Pro Network of vetted professional landscapers to install your new design.

Ready to transform your yard into a modern cottage garden? Create your design profile or explore our design packages today!

Cottage Gardens: How to Create a Yard That Looks Plucked From the English Countryside

Image via Saga Magazine

Prized for their fanciful looks, cottage gardens were actually a practical invention. 

The defining characteristics of this garden style—dense planting, lots of different species, flowers mixed with edible plants—are said to have been developed to maximize food production. More flowers meant more bees to pollinate food crops. Beauty was a happy byproduct of necessity. 

Traditional in origin and informal in appearance, cottage gardens today are enjoying a well-deserved return to popularity. They’re also evolving in fun new directions.

Get started on your cottage garden by Yardzen today!

A rich layering of flowers, including several pollinator-loving, native plants and evergreen shrubs in this Yardzen yard.

What’s in a cottage garden?

Plants dominate cottage gardens. You’ll see them climbing up walls and arbors, leaning into paths, and squeezing into every inch of oversized beds. The overall impression is abundant, whimsical, and a little wild.

The designer’s rule of thumb to keep plants at or below waist height along path and patio edges still applies, but you can get away with plants encroaching on people-spaces a lot more in cottage designs. It’s almost expected. 

Materials in cottage gardens are humble. Gravel, old brick, and stone are popular for their natural look. Whatever the material, hardscape is routinely swaddled in green. Planting pops up between pavers, slips across path edges, and spills over walls at every opportunity. 

You won’t find any of the geometry, pattern, or axial arrangements of more formal garden styles. Rather, lines in cottage gardens meander gracefully. This creates fun conceal-and-reveal opportunities as paths wend around densely planted curves.

A modern take on the cottage garden for a Yardzen client, including abundant blooms, gravel, stone, edibles, and functional outdoor space.

ALL the Flowers

Flowers of all colors, shapes, and sizes are the stars of cottage gardens. Floral displays in cottage gardens change not only with the season, but over the years as well. 

While hollyhock, cosmos, and foxgloves are common in English cottage gardens, gardens stateside feature regional pollinator-friendly species, many with broad native ranges. North American staples like yarrow, goldenrod, Salvia, Allium, Penstemon, and Joe-Pye weed are all popular choices.

For immediate color, quick-blooming flowers, many of them annuals, are often used to hold down the show until longer-lived perennial species reach maturity. California poppies make for a solid intro act for gardens throughout the West, blooming quickly, commanding attention for a year or two, then clearing out for longer-lived perennials to take over.

Year-round interest in this Yardzen yard! A mix of warm-season blooms, like lavender, and evergreen trees like olive, and vines,

Year-Round Interest 

When choosing flowers, bloom timing is a key consideration. The goal: make sure something is always in bloom for as much of the year as possible. 

Shorten the bloomless cold season by including early-blooming species like Narcissus, Crocus, and Ivory Prince hellebore, along with the fabulous redbud tree, which develops delicate pink blooms directly on bare branches (redbuds are also excellent habitat trees).

Incorporating evergreens and plants with winter interest also helps to keep things lively when flowers are absent. Look for species with colorful foliage, structural branching, or attractive bark. The glowing red branches of the red twig dogwood make it a classic winter focal point.

A lemon tree mingles with stone and flowering, pollinator-loving shrubs in this Yardzen yard.

Other Plants Too!

Cottage gardens blend smaller shrubs and non-flowering perennials among flowering species to establish a layered, verdant backdrop. This is where you’ll find herbs and fruit-bearing bushes mixed among ornamental species, balancing productivity with aesthetic effect. 

Taller shrubs and small trees (including fruit trees) provide structural punctuation and pockets of dappled shade. Using trees also adds variety to light conditions, creating diverse site conditions that in turn invite a broader diversity of plant species.  

Ornamental grasses, while less common, can be artfully worked into cottage gardens as well. Grasses look particularly at home in dry climate gardens.

Species lists run long in cottage gardens. Where grassland-inspired designs plant fewer species in larger masses, cottage gardens take the opposite approach, planting just a few individuals of many different species. The result is a highly diverse and intermixed planting design that begs to be experienced up close.

Are cottage gardens sustainable?

A cottage garden’s sustainability comes down to plant selection. 

By choosing native or climate-adapted plants that require minimal additional irrigation, you can develop a cottage garden that will be water-wise despite its lushness. In fact, dense planting acts like mulch, helping soil to retain moisture by insulating it from heat and light, making your irrigation water go further.  

With unrivaled species diversity, cottage gardens have more potential than any other garden style to support biodiversity. While some introduced species like lavender and Russian sage are fabulous at attracting bees, nothing rivals native species for offering habitat to pollinators (along with a host of other beneficial insects). By planting a robust mix of habitat-rich species, predominantly natives, you can make your cottage garden into a veritable habitat oasis.

This abundant Yardzen front yard is actually incredibly easy-to-maintain because of the application of several cottage garden principles.

Are cottage gardens hard to maintain?

It can be hard to believe,  but cottage gardens actually offer a few maintenance advantages. Shaggy by design, you can skip fussy pruning and simply let plants grow. Cutting back some perennials can boost blooms and keep plants from getting woody, but laborious trimming is generally unnecessary. 

Weeding requirements are also minimal at most. Dense planting creates stiff competition and limited real estate for weeds in a cottage garden. In some cases, flowering volunteer species can actually become a welcome addition to a cottage planting bed. 

 When species with similar light, water, and soil preferences are grouped together in a cottage design, they can be tended as a community, and require little individual attention. Selecting natives from similar ecosystems is a great place to start when assembling a community-based planting design.

With fewer individuals of any one species, plant failure has a limited impact in a cottage garden. It’s easy to replace poor-performing species when you only need to swap out a handful of them.

The “New Cottage Garden” for a Yardzen client, including gravel, whimsical lights, abundant blooms, and year-round interest.

The New Cottage Garden

The low stakes for failure in cottage gardens give designers exceptional freedom to experiment. The style welcomes a playful approach, and begs to evolve over the years, with new plants substituting those that have run their course. A designer can get a client started, but clients should feel empowered to continue their garden’s evolution by blending in new species over time. 

Today, cottage gardens are taking on fun new expressions, driven by a growing emphasis on climate-adapted and native planting. Native plants project a signature look that evokes their regional landscape, be it prairie grasses in the Midwest, coniferous trees in the Northwest,  maples in New England, or woodland shrubs in California. 

Blending proven-winner natives into cottage gardens adds a dash of regional character, linking the garden to the regional landscape while maintaining that distinct cottage feel. Not all cottage gardens should look the same, and natives are there to help us keep things unique, not to mention more sustainable.

Get started on your cottage garden by Yardzen today!

Yardzen Partners with TimberTech

We are excited to announce Yardzen’s partnership with TimberTech®. We chose to partner with TimberTech as our exclusive High-Performance Decking partner because of the exceptional quality of their materials, their industry-leading sustainability practices, and the unmatched performance of their decking in yards from coast to coast.

Yardzen’s Design Director, Kevin Lenhart, PMLA, shares why TimberTech is his choice for any Yardzen client.

Environmental Impact

Wood per se is not problematic, but the way it is produced often is. There are some exceptions: wood certified by the Forest Stewardship Council has been grown and harvested sustainably. (If you use wood in your project, we highly recommend using FSC-certified wood!) Sadly, FSC-certified wood makes up only a small fraction of wood in the residential landscape market. The majority of wood comes from plantations. 

A typical timber plantation features a single tree species and scant ecological value. When native forests are replaced by plantations, diverse communities of trees and understory plants are destroyed. This process pollutes waterways with erosion, eliminates crucial habitat, and decimates biodiversity. 

It also contributes to global warming. While old growth forests store carbon for centuries, the timber plantations and young timber forests that replace them are actually net emitters of carbon due to soil disturbance and ecosystem degradation. Worldwide, deforestation causes 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Timber production and agricultural clearing are the key drivers of this deforestation.

Demand in the U.S. and Europe in particular for tropical hardwoods like ipe and cumaru fuels massive illegal logging operations in the Amazon, Indonesia, and other tropical regions. 

Choosing recycled composite decking, like TimberTech, side steps the environmental hazards of timber production, and casts a vote for more sustainable forest management.

It also impacts the waste stream. TimberTech’s recycling program diverted roughly 500 million pounds of waste in 2021. Their composite boards are made from up to 80% recycled wood and plastic. Up to 97% of the water used in their manufacturing process is recycled, as is 99% of the scrap they generate internally. Since 2001, sales of TimberTech have helped to preserve over 3 million trees. Factoring the shorter lifespan of wood decks, TimberTech also helps to keep aged-out decks from entering landfills.

Bottom line, you can feel good about using TimberTech.

TimberTech’s sustainability commitment

Design Quality

The durability, low maintenance, cost effectiveness, and sustainability of TimberTech decking would mean nothing if it didn’t look good. 

Fortunately, it’s gorgeous. With a broad range of available colors, wood grain finishes, and board dimensions, TimberTech adapts easily to virtually any design aesthetic - mix and match to get the look and feel you need. 

TimberTech is also simple to work with. Contractors can install it just like wood, without any need for a complex installation system. It can even be bent to achieve curved design features. Factor this with its durability and low maintenance requirements, and it’s easy to understand why our contractors love it.

If you’d like to learn more about TimberTech, feel free to browse their website. You can also chat or schedule a consultation call with a Yardzen team member by visiting Yardzen.com. 

Durable + Low Maintenance

TimberTech’s products are exceptionally durable and low-maintenance thanks to technological advances across the range of products. The structure of the boards offer numerous benefits:

• Weatherproof. That means no weathering, mold, or mildew from exposure to the elements (all common issues with wood decking).

• Sun Loving. TimberTech holds up well in sunlight, resisting fading far better than wood, and they have warranties to boot. TimberTech’s AZEK line stays cool - 30 degrees cooler than competing composite products, to be precise.

• Foot Friendly. In addition to keeping cool underfoot, TimberTech won’t splinter. Kick off your shoes with confidence.

• Strong. Put simply, TimberTech won’t break - install it and forget about it. It also has great warranties, so in the rare event that it does incur damage, you’ll be covered.

TimberTech Weathered-Teak Vintage Collection AZEK Wide Width Decking

Lower Lifetime Costs

When you factor the time and expense required to maintain, repair, or replace wood decking, TimberTech has a substantially lower lifetime cost than wood.

• No weatherproofing. Decks and other outdoor wood structures require annual coats of paint, stain, or waterproofing seal to protect them from moisture and UV damage. TimberTech is weatherproof from the start, no additional treatment required.

• Longer Lifespan. A typical wood deck lasts 10-15 years. TimberTech decks have fade and stain warranties ranging from 25-50 years, and TimberTech’s AZEK line has a lifetime product warranty. The value is clear: you’ll pay for two wood decks to achieve the longevity you get from a single TimberTech deck.

• Fewer repairs. As they age, wood decks incur cosmetic and structural damage. Sooner or later, you’ll need to refinish, repair, or replace the frame or surface of a wood deck. Such issues are rare with TimberTech. Most likely, your maintenance will involve little more than an occasional wash. 

• Competitive Purchase Price. Historically, composite decking costs more to purchase than wood. Even with this higher purchase price, the deferred maintenance, repairs, and replacement that TimberTech offers make it a better lifetime value. 

Today, with wood prices through the roof, TimberTech can sometimes cost less than wood. That means that TimberTech not only costs you less in the long run, but very often at the time of purchase too.

Los Angeles Backyard Before & After with Yardzen and MG Construction & Decks

With some of the best weather in the country, Los Angeles offers prime conditions for outdoor living. That’s exactly what one Yardzen client, Davida B., had in mind when she came to Yardzen. “We want a backyard we can sit in and enjoy, watch the kids play, and host BBQs with friends and family,” she says. Their West LA yard had potential, but it was underutilized. “We have this nice space but we don’t currently use it because it’s not functional,” she explains. So, Davida and her family hired Yardzen to design their space and Yardzen Pro Network contractors, MG Construction & Decks, to build their design.

The “before” of the backyard

The Vision

Going into the Yardzen design process, the client had a pretty specific plan in mind. First and foremost, they’d extend the existing stone patio to link to the fire pit zone, and replace the fire pit itself with a new and improved outdoor kitchen. The existing dining zone, centered on the living room doors, would shift from to this new kitchen zone, creating a cooking and entertaining hub. 

With dining relocated, the central patio would transition to a more casual lounge space, while the existing outdoor kitchen, across the yard, could be scrapped and replaced by a hot tub. The middle lawn would remain an easily-viewed play space for the kids.

One additional priority was the lawn, which was time- and resource-intensive and had become weathered and brown. In its place, the client requested artificial grass, which holds up very well to the Los Angeles heat and creates an easy-to-maintain play space for the kids. (Read more in our Guide to Grass Alternatives.)

The Design

Working together, Yardzen and the client developed a design that achieved the client’s wish of breathing life back into their yard. As envisioned, the stone patio extended, forming an L-shape that accommodated a new kitchen and dining area, while also creating a nice space for existing guest room doors to open onto.

In a key break from the client’s roadmap, the designer placed the hot tub next to the cooking and dining area, rather than across the yard. Keeping the tub close to the active epicenter of the design made it more socially connected, increased its likelihood of use, and allowed for a larger uninterrupted play space for the kids. 

A pergola above and curb-height deck below accentuates the hot tub area as a separate zone, yet the pergola’s broad opening to the lawn maintains a strong sense of connection to the surrounding yard.

The completed backyard by MG Construction & Decks!

The Build

With final designs in hand, Yardzen’s team connected the client with Pro Network contractors MG Construction & Decks to install their new landscape. Yardzen’s vetted network of contractors, our Pro Network, consists of exceptional talent in the landscape construction field. Every contractor in our network is licensed, bonded, and insured, and has a public record of excellent work.

As with many construction projects, MG Construction & Decks worked with Davida and her family on last-mile design changes in the field— this is to be expected with any construction project, and it is one the many reasons why we have such high stands for our Pro Network. After walking the site and reviewing the design, the client and contractor developed a few key design adjustments. 

• First and foremost, MG Construction & Decks replaced the stone patio with TimberTech decking. The client was never wild about their existing stone, but had shied away from decking for fear of staining and fading color. Fortunately, TimberTech is remarkably stain, scratch, and fade resistant, even when confronted with rambunctious children and California sunshine.  It’s also much more weather and moisture resistant than wood, making it a viable choice for an in-ground deck, which was necessary to accommodate the fixed elevations of the client’s living and guest room doors. 

• Next, MG and the client relocated the pergola from the hot tub to the central patio. In its new home above the living room doors, the pergola could mount directly to the house, leaving only two structural posts below. This maximized free-flowing circulation while establishing the new lounge zone beneath the pergola as a distinct space. The added shade was a great perk, too. With no ceiling above, the hot tub could be wrapped in handsome deck stairs. With this single adjustment, the design could hide the above-ground tub, provide informal seating facing the lawn and kitchen, and materially link the hot tub to the broader patio. 

• The kitchen itself retained it’s designed L-shape, but welcomed the raised hot tub decking along the back of the counter, establishing a strong link and social opportunity for bathers to share a drink with folks who’d rather stay dry.

The Result

Today, the client’s dream landscape is a reality— you can catch them enjoying life outside with family and friends, doing what they hoped to do in their yard. 

Credit the success of their project to a strong initial vision, a flexible and collaborative outlook, and expert stewardship from Yardzen’s build partners, MG Decks.

2022 New Year’s Resolution: Spend More Time Outside

Yardzen co-founders, Adam and Allison Messner, enjoying their outdoor “California Room”— their favorite “room” at home!

If you’ve resolved to make 2022 a better year than 2021, we’re right there with you. Here are three ways to make this the year you live better outside. 

A family in the Bay Area enjoying their newly completed Yardzen yard!

Resolve to improve your well being by simply getting outside more in 2022.

In 2019 the journal Nature reported what many already knew intuitively: spending 120 minutes a week in nature, or just 17 minutes per day, can significantly boost happiness and overall well-being. There is a substantial body of research linking green spaces to lower risks of disease, mental health problems, and mortality, and better health and cognitive development in children.

Work with a design expert to create an outdoor space purposefully-designed for connectedness with nature. Think of it as essential self care in 2022. 

An outdoor dining room in a recently completed Yardzen yard.

In 2022, make your yard your default entertaining space. 

Where people once used to gather around the kitchen island, those gatherings are moving outdoors whenever possible. In fact, an outdoor dining space is the single most requested design feature in Yardzen designs. 

In addition to outdoor dining, a full half of Yardzen clients want an outdoor kitchen. These outdoor kitchens take all shapes and sizes, from built-in BBQs to chef-style setups.

Yardzen’s design experts can create a smart plan to maximize your outdoor square footage and help give your space flow and intention.

Growing your own food has never been more desirable than it will be in 2022.

But the gardens Yardzen clients request look different—they’re smaller and low-maintenance. For some people, it’s a fruit tree and an herb garden (hello, cocktail garden!), for others, it’s raised beds to encourage kids to get their hands dirty.  Homeowners are longing to connect to their produce in a hyper local way, but they don't want to give up their weekends for their zucchini.

Make 2022 the year you reimagine your home’s potential and live better outside. You’ll want to start on your design now to ensure your dream yard is ready by summer. 

Contractors are harder to book in their busy season (spring) so aim to book your contractor during the winter to ensure that they’re ready to break ground in the spring. 

After your final design is ready, Yardzen’s team will help facilitate the entire contractor matching and selection process.

Explore Design Packages »

Before & After: From Unused Space to Functional Outdoor Living

“Our yard was pretty much dirt when we got Yardzen involved,”  explained Sarah C. of her family’s Solana Beach, CA home. 

Perched on a hilltop, their yard was fairly large, but underutilized. Aesthetically and functionally, they knew their landscape could offer more.

Before Yardzen

The Yard

Complicating matters was a tall slope wrapping the backyard’s perimeter. They needed more functional flat space for kids to play and adults to relax. To create this space, they would need to push the slope back a bit. 

A rental ADU nestled in their side yard also demanded private space of its own. “We needed to have separation between the house and the ADU, but wanted to keep it looking organic,” she explained. 

The front yard’s challenges were largely aesthetic. They already planned to liven up their house with fresh white paint, and hoped for a compact, striking landscape design to complement this new look.

Before Yardzen

After Yardzen

With two young kids and two full-time jobs, time was a factor. They needed a hands-off solution to get more from their yard. “My husband and I are very busy people,” Sarah explained. “We wanted a process that wouldn’t require a lot of meetings.” 

Yardzen’s streamlined design process was exactly what they needed. “Our experience was very smooth going through every step,” Sarah said. “I loved that I could submit my inspiration photos and someone would dream up something beautiful and functional for us.”

Budget was a factor as well. They had enough to cover their main goals, but not enough for a full yard makeover. 

The Design

To navigate budget constraints, Yardzen zeroed in on their top priorities. 

First: flat space. 

To create more room for living, the design added a retaining wall along the toe of the slope. Hot tub and fire pit zones were added for the adults to enjoy, while the kids got an open decomposed granite play space.

A patio of large concrete squares gridded with decomposed granite gaps offered flexible space that could accommodate a range of impromptu outdoor gatherings. 

Throughout, scenes of dry-climate grasses and succulents dotted the edges of spaces, blurring boundaries to create a cohesive and landscape-forward feel across the yard.

To cordon off a private ADU zone, the design utilized an unhedged screen of Pittosporum ‘Silver Sheen’, footed with flowing ornamental grasses in key locations. With tiny, shimmering leaves, the Pittosporum offered privacy without the sense of mass associated with darker, chunkier hedges. The planting established a soft, comfortable atmosphere, and saved budget by avoiding privacy fencing.

Fruit trees and vegetable boxes were another key request for Sarah and her family. A sunny but distant corner of the yard was the perfect place for this, driving activity to a formerly unused space while leaving areas closer to the house open for play and relaxation.

The Build

To make their design a reality, Sarah connected with Nico Rivetti of Rivetti Landscapes. “It was smooth getting the recommendation to work with Nico,” Sarah said. “He was a great guy, and was very easy to work with.”

Working together, Nico and Sarah’s family made some last mile adjustments to the design, replacing the hot tub with an all-purpose sport court, and tucking in a putting green. With these tweaks in place, the Rivetti team got to work installing. Before long, Sarah and her family’s dream yard had become a reality.

“We love all of it and get so many compliments,” Sarah said of her new yard. “My favorite parts are the concrete squares and the hedge that separates the ADU. I loved that part of the design and never would have thought of that myself.”

Work with the experts at Yardzen to design and build your own dream yard. 

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Yardzen's 2022 Outdoor Design Forecast

The pandemic and climate change have forever changed the way we live at home. Here’s what we expect to see in outdoor design in 2022.

Yardzen’s 2022 Outdoor Design Forecast is a look forward at what we expect to see in outdoor spaces in the new year. We compiled this report using data collected from over 25,000 prospective and Yardzen clients, as well as the opinions of Yardzen landscape and exterior designers. At the core of this report is a commitment to creating sustainable outdoor spaces, an appreciation for the beauty of well-designed exteriors, and our firmly held belief that life is best lived outside.

A multi-purpose outdoor living space for these Yardzen homeowners.

Open-Air Living

COVID transformed homeowners' relationship to their outdoor spaces permanently. Here’s what it will look like in 2022.

Over the last two years, outdoor space has taken on new meaning. While most of us hunkered down at home, our yards became the only green space and fresh air we could access: space to play, make noise, work uninterrupted, exercise, and talk with friends and neighbors from afar. And, as restrictions lift, we don’t see any going back.

Yardzen has grown 500% since March 2021, indicating that even as the pandemic transforms, the desire for functional outdoor space is on the rise. Homeowners throughout the country understand that open-air areas, in all their forms, are crucial for wellbeing. We predict even more desire for open-air living in 2022.

A low-water front yard replaces an expanse of unused lawn.

Designing for Drought

Drought will be a reality in 2022, and not just for the West. Here’s how it will change outdoor design.

States throughout the country experienced unprecedented drought in 2021. Even parts of the Southeast and the Midwest, historically wet regions, imposed water restrictions to combat increasingly dry conditions. And, in the West, “extreme drought” reigns throughout with local regulations and fines imposed in many municipalities, with NOAA forecasting drought to persist in much of the Western US through 2022 and beyond.

One of the easiest ways for homeowners to decrease water consumption at home is by mitigating usage in their yards. In regions where drought is a concern, Yardzen’s design team always opts for climate-adapted plants, which have grown to thrive in local conditions, permeable hardscaping, like gravel and mulch, which helps with ground-water storage, and lawn alternatives.

Drought-tolerant plants are increasingly a top priority for Yardzen clients. 85% of clients indicate that they want low-water plants in their yards.

Beauty in Imperfection: Japandi Yards

Japandi will be the one of the hottest outdoor style trends of 2022.

We’ve seen an increase in desire for Japandi yards, a fusion of Scandinavian style, and the Japanese term “wabi-sabi,” which roughly translates to “there’s beauty in imperfection." Japandi yards break free from the neat lines of traditional landscaping and embrace the organic form.

Japandi yards make beautiful use of texture and height, combining tall, billowy grasses with creeping ground covers and freely formed shrubs. Hardscaping selections often include warm woods and loose gravel and follow the shapes and curves of the terrain. And, as the backdrop, a home’s exterior walls and fences: soft charcoal, blues, and neutrals, which tie the whole space together.

The warm minimalism of Japandi yards makes them a great option for clients seeking a low-maintenance space. Embracing the natural form of plants and terrain encourages homeowners to embrace the beauty in their yard’s imperfections. However, Japandi doesn’t mean that the space lacks design--working with Yardzen’s design team will ensure that the yard flows and that you select plants that will thrive with little intervention. We predict Japandi will be one of the hottest outdoor style trends of 2022.

Yardzen cofounder Adam Messner with Pro Network contractor Frank Green of FG Pavers & Turf.

Bring in the Professionals

Do it once, do it right. DIY will continue to shrink in 2022 as people come to favor hiring pros for outdoor renovation projects.

One overwhelming refrain we heard in 2021: “We tried to do it ourselves, but we realized we needed help.” Expanding livable square footage through outdoor remodels was a top pandemic project, and it worked out well for some; but for many, they found themselves with a pile of unused, expensive lumber, and a lot of unhappy plants. Now, those DIYers are turning to Yardzen to create a comprehensive plan for their yard and install it.

Over 93% of Yardzen clients indicate that they plan to hire a Yardzen contractor to install their designs, and according to Home Depot’s Q3 report, the big box store is seeing the same. Home Depot's earnings call tells this story, also.

From the call:

"During the third quarter, Pro sales growth continued to out-pace DIY growth. [...] Similar to the second quarter, we saw many of our customers turn to Pros for help with larger projects. We remain encouraged by what we are hearing from our Pros, as they tell us their backlogs are healthy."

We predict DIY will continue to slow in 2022.

Add warmth and natural beauty to your winter yard.

Embrace the Seasons of Your Yard

With a desire to live outside year round, people will design their yards to provide utility through the seasons in 2022.

Here at Yardzen, we’re inspired by the Nordic expression “frilutsliv,” which roughly translates to “open-air living” throughout the year, even in the frigid North. For all of our clients, regardless of their latitude, it's always our recommendation to embrace the seasons of your yard and make the most out of your outdoor space regardless of the weather. The good news is that there are many landscaping and exterior design solutions that make year-round yards beautiful, functional, and comfortable.

Add Warmth

When designing a cool-season yard, adding warmth is a top priority. Fire pits and heat lamps go a long way in making an outdoor space comfortable during the fall and winter. We also recommend keeping throw blankets handy--they are a beautiful decor touch and are an easy and inexpensive solution.

Protect From the Elements

Pergolas, covered patios, and porches can transform a yard into an all-seasons gathering space. There are several pergola options with cantilevered and removable covers that protect from the elements.

Make it Beautiful

There are many ways to make your yard come alive during the cool season. To add natural beauty to your yard, consider including evergreens in your design that will add life to your yard regardless of the season. Potted plants with cold-hardy varieties are also a fantastic way to give personality to a barren landscape. We also recommend adding décor, like string lights, to bare trees and bushes, which gives leafless plants an architectural and sculpture feel.

A hillside of native and climate-adapted plants.

The Rewilded Yard

Rewilding, or restoring wildness, will lead outdoor trends in 2022 as people favor native and climate-adapted plants.

Yardzen launched the American Rewilding Project in 2019, and since then, we’ve designed yards with over 50,000 climate-adapted and habitat-supporting plants, laying the groundwork for wildlife corridors and healthy ecosystems throughout the country.

Since launching ARP, we’ve seen a significant uptick in requests for habitat-supporting plants. Today, more than 90% of Yardzen clients request native and climate-adapted plants in their yards. More and more, homeowners understand that they can make a difference in the world by what they choose to put in their yards. With an increasing focus on sustainability, we predict even more focus on rewilding in 2022.

Yardzen’s first exterior design clients knew that the only way to transform their front yard was to change their home’s exterior, too.

The Backdrop to Your Yard

Landscaping will expand to include the exterior of the home, designed at once to create a cohesive palette, in 2022.

Just like the walls inside your home, the walls on your home’s exterior are crucial for setting the scene for everything around them, including landscaping and furniture. Paint color, decor, trim, windows, doors, and lighting are all an important part of the calculus of designing your outdoor rooms.

It is with this knowledge that your home’s facade is the backdrop to your landscaping that we launched our exterior design offering in the summer of 2021 in conjunction with several of our favorite retailers, including Benjamin Moore, Marvin Doors & Windows, and Rejuvenation. Our new packages allow homeowners to reimagine the full potential of their outdoor spaces. And, we’ve seen unprecedented demand for the service, with over 30% of orders now including exterior design.

A low-maintenance Yardzen yard, including high-performance decking.

Low-Maintenance Everything

After living and working at home, in 2022, low-maintenance outdoor spaces will reign supreme.

Yardzen’s top request in 2021 was for a “low-maintenance” yard and exterior. In fact, 89% of Yardzen clients wanted a low-maintenance yard. While Yardzen homeowners want to spend more time in their outdoor spaces, they don’t necessarily want to spend time maintaining them. The good news is that there are several plants, materials, and furniture solutions that make it easy to achieve a low-maintenance outdoor space.

Low-Maintenance Plants

Native and climate-adapted plants are one of the best options for low-maintenance plants. These varieties have grown to thrive in local conditions, meaning that they require little-to-no input from the homeowner, including water, amendments, and general care. Some will require pruning and “cutting back,” though, to maintain their size and thrive.

Low-Maintenance Materials

It’s important to keep maintenance in mind when selecting materials for your outdoor space. For example, wood decking requires regular cleaning and sealing. Instead, opt for composite decking material, like Azek’s TimberTech. Or, when painting your home, opt for a product with a bit of sheen, as it doesn’t show dust and dirt as readily. 

Low-Maintenance Furniture

The key to low-maintenance furniture is selecting high-quality, durable products that stand up to the elements. Inexpensive, “single-season” outdoor furniture often becomes high-maintenance when it requires frequent replacement and repairs.

Yardzen cofounders Adam and Allison Messner in their front yard, which is one of the family’s favorite places to gather.

The Changing Face of Curb Appeal

42% of Yardzen clients request functional front yard space.

Curb appeal was long considered a manicured lawn and a fresh coat of paint. In recent years that definition has changed as our planet, our communities, and our priorities have changed. 

We’re still big proponents of a fresh coat of paint, as well as new lighting, a mailbox, and house numbers. These changes can reveal an entirely new home. But, what happens in between a home and the street is rapidly changing.

Even before the pandemic, and increasingly since then, we’ve seen a 3x increase in requests for functional front yards. Space to grow vegetables, gather with the neighbors, and enjoy family gatherings. Much like traditional front porches, the front yard is now a space for open-air living with family, friends, and pets.

And, don’t forget the hell strip, that space in between the front yard and the street. A hell strip is a perfect space to add habitat-supporting plants and trees to tie the whole curb appeal together.

Pavers Add a High-Design Look to Any Yard

In 2022 people will add functional outdoor living space with pavers.

Poured concrete pavers remain one of our most requested design elements for their ability to add an architectural, high-design look to any style of yard. From ultra-modern midcentury yards to traditional yards, it should come as no surprise that concrete pavers are here to stay.

One thing we love about concrete pavers is how well they play with other materials. Turf, ground cover, and gravel all work very well in between poured concrete pavers. Not to mention, they are a great solution. In the majority of yards, permeability is a top concern, and concrete pavers offer that functionality.

Black is a Neutral

Paint it black. In 2022 black is the new outdoor neutral for fences and exteriors.

We’ve all seen the rise in black and charcoal fences and exteriors. Here at Yardzen, one of the top requests for our clients is to change the surfaces of their home and yard from an outdated brown or beige to a bold black or blue.

While some may be hesitant to jump on this trend, our partner, Benjamin Moore’s Head of Color, Andrea Magno, says that dark colors are here to stay, and that “black is now neutral.” So, for those who are hesitant to change their home or their fence to a black or charcoal-- go for it. Dark exteriors are here to stay!

No-mow lawn in a Yardzen yard.

A New Look for Lawn

Good-bye, lawn. As drought imposes its consequences in 2022, people will say goodbye to lawn and hello to alternatives.

Every year, lawns consume trillions of gallons of water, millions of gallons of gas, and millions of pounds of pesticides. Traditional sod provides little to no habitat for pollinators and other animals and plants that make up a healthy, diverse ecosystem. Fortunately, there are several fantastic low-water, habitat-supporting alternatives that Yardzen recommends as part of our American Rewilding Project.

Yardzen’s staff horticulturalist, Zolene Quindoy, shares her top recommendations for lawn replacements.

Non-Grass Ground Cover

For smaller areas, non-grass species can be a great fit. Ground-hugging perennial ground covers create a soft natural carpet or fill in between pavers and stepping stones. Many species are durable enough to tolerate occasional foot traffic, and there are species suitable for both sun and shade. Some of the species we use most are Silver Carpet (Dymondia margaratae), Creeping or Wooly Thyme (Thymus spp.), Roman Chamomile (Chamaemelum nobile), and Stonecrop (Sedum spp.).

No-Mow Lawn

Usually a blend of creeping and clumping Fescue varieties. It does require occasional mowing and raking out old material to keep it healthy and looking tidy. You can select low water no-mow varieties that require much less water and fertilizer than a traditional lawn, and the minimal maintenance also reduces the carbon footprint compared to mowing with a gas-powered mower. Some of our favorite 

 Meadow Grasses

These are usually not true "grass" species, but a closely related plant called sedge (Carex sp.). Species used will vary regionally, but some common varieties are Carex praegracilis, C. pansa, and C. texensis. Great for stabilizing slopes.

Buffalo Grass (Buchloe dactyloides)

North American native that comprised the short grass prairies that American Buffalo once roamed. Requires ~75% less water than a traditional lawn. May be mowed to more closely resemble a traditional lawn, or left to grow out to its full height of 8-10". Turns buff/golden-brown in winter, but quickly greens up in spring.

A Yardzen homeowner harvesting basil in her yard.

Edibles Throughout

Growing your own has never been more desirable than it will be in 2022.

Just as we’ve seen a continued desire for edible gardening at home, we’ve also seen a rise in clients requesting “functional” plants throughout their yard as a way to exercise an emerging green thumb. For many, this looks like choosing edible ornamentals—plants with multiple purposes, including edibles. Examples include apple trees for shade, basil as a shrub, olive trees for beauty, hedges made of rosemary, artichokes for adding body and texture, grapes to cover pergolas and arches, and purple cabbage to add color. For homeowners seeking purposeful, functional, and beautiful landscaping, edibles are a fantastic choice.

Hillside Landscaping Guide to Make the Most of Your Sloped Yard

A sloped Yardzen yard transformed by a retaining wall and smart landscape design decisions

Sloped terrain provides some of the most dramatic features in a landscape. Think of towering trees, distant views, and rhythmic planting drawing your eye uphill. Design can complement this drama: paths vanishing and reappearing, terraces slicing through slopes, decks defying gravity. Poetic? Absolutely. Easy to do? Not necessarily. 

Should you be discouraged? No way! Hillside landscape design is achievable if you understand the challenges and set appropriate goals.

Challenges

Let’s start by reviewing some challenges that slopes present.

• Access + Labor. Slopes, especially steep ones, are difficult to work on, and may be difficult to access. Hillside work takes longer to execute, and therefore costs more. 

• Irrigation. Water flows downhill, and water applied to plants on slopes is no exception. Keeping water in the root zone long enough for plants to absorb it can be difficult, and requires special measures.  

• Erosion. As rainfall flows downhill, it sweeps topsoil, mulch, and other surface materials along with it. This depletes soil quality, destabilizes slopes, and spreads debris around your yard. 

• Maintenance. As with installation labor, maintenance is extra challenging on slopes.

Fortunately, there are field-tested strategies to deal with each of these challenges (we’ll discuss them below). For now,  just be aware that these issues apply to hillside designs.

Setting Goals for Your Hillside Yard

Now that we understand some of the challenges, let’s consider the goals that shape our hillside designs.

To Flatten, or Not to Flatten?

You can roughly categorize goals for hillside designs into two big buckets: 

• Flatten the slope

• Don’t flatten the slope

Flattening is perhaps the most common request we receive regarding sloped yards, so let’s talk about that first.

...To Flatten

Clients frequently seek to flatten slopes to provide more space for playing, cooking, dining, or anything else that requires a level surface. This makes perfect sense from a functional perspective, but the work required to achieve this goal is often underestimated. 

There are two ways to create flat space on an existing slope: make a terrace, or build a deck. 

Terrace: Terracing works by moving soil around - a process called “grading” - to create a level plane in the middle of a slope. Generally, you cut the uphill half of the terrace into the slope, and pile the excavated soil on the downhill half, building retaining walls around all four sides to hold everything in place. 

Deck: Grading can be avoided by floating a deck above a slope. The uphill edge of the deck rests on the ground, while the downhill edge is supported by tall posts anchored in the slope below. 

Either approach is budget-intensive, which is something not all clients are aware of when they start the design process.

Terracing often requires heavy machinery for earth-moving, but if machinery can’t access the slope - a common issue - then soil must be moved by hand. Add in retaining wall expenses and difficult working conditions, and terraces quickly become costly.

As decks get larger and higher, they can trigger permitting, a process that adds cost and hassle. Factor in labor, materials, and providing access to the deck via stairs or paths, and deck costs also quickly accumulate. Decks may or may not cost less than terraces - the cost of either feature ultimately depends on the specific site and design.

Before we scare you off, let’s be clear: for many clients, terraces and hillside decks are a great idea and absolutely worth the investment. If this is you, it pays to know how to get the most bang for your buck.

Tips for Flattening Slopes:

• Set priorities: Do a clear-eyed cost-benefit analysis at the outset of your project. Identify how important flat space is to you compared to other features in your design, and let that determine how much you are willing to invest in it.

• Build enough, not extra: Design terraces and decks to comfortably accommodate their intended uses, but don’t go any larger than you need to. Oversizing or building multiple terraces or decks drains budget resources away from the rest of your design.

• Keep it flexible: Make your flat spaces accommodate a variety of uses - this maxes out functionality while keeping built footprints manageable. Avoid built-in benches or other immobile features that cut through the middle of a flat space. Keep your layout flexible and open.

• Work with what you’ve got: If terracing, look to build on existing flat spots within a slope. This minimizes grading. If existing paths - formal or informal - already exist on your slope, utilize them to avoid the expense of providing access to new flat spaces.

• Go easy with walls: Limit the length of retaining walls to the bare minimum. Whenever possible, use cost-effective retaining wall materials like stacked stone, wood, or interlocking engineered blocks. If you don’t love these materials, consider planting above and below the walls to draw your eye elsewhere. Pro tip: let groundcover plants like Rosmarinus ‘Prostratus’ hang over the top of a wall. 

• Avoid permits: Determine local codes for wall height, deck height and square footage, and any other potential factors that could trigger permitting. If permits are required, you must get one, but try for a design that does not require a permit in the first place. We suggest keeping retaining walls under 3’ tall, and decks as low and modest as possible.

• Consider access: If access for crews or equipment will be challenging, or if your slopes are extra steep, your costs will likely increase. Factor this in when considering how much you’d like to flatten. 

• Surgical strikes: For some clients, creating a handful of small terraces can be a cost-effective strategy. Spaces designed for just a bench or a small table and chairs require smaller, shorter walls, and can be created relatively cheaply. They can also take greater advantage of small flat zones within an existing slope than larger terraces. Small terraces cannot accommodate space-intensive uses like group dining or kitchens, but for meditative spaces or even small fire pit zones, they can be a great solution.

Abundant pollinator-supporting plants create a beautiful background in this sloped Yardzen yard

...NOT to Flatten

Enough about flattening. What else can we do with slopes?

• Plant for Beauty. A well-composed planting design treats alternates focal moments of planting (specimen trees, compositions of shrubs and perennials) with open spaces occupied by low, spreading groundcover plants. The result should be a scenic resource for the rest of the yard to enjoy. Audit your existing slope for standout features, and use them as scenic anchors in your planting design. Fill the gaps with groundcover planting and the occasional boulder.

• Plant for Stability. Rain quickly erodes bare soil. Plants’ roots hold soil in place, while their foliage slows water on its way downhill, coaxing it back into the ground. Rocks anchored in the slope achieve a similar effect. Use groundcover plants adapted to hillside conditions - ideally natives - to quickly spread and stabilize bare slopes. Take care to avoid any invasive species.

• Playscapes. Slopes that terminate in flat areas can be used for play features. Stack boulders or stumps for a scramble, or embed a prefabricated slide into a slope. Play features embedded into the landscape look more cohesive than your average primary-colored play equipment, and they lend a little whimsy to a design. Whatever fun ideas you come up with, just make sure there is a safe, flat landing zone - a design should never put children at risk of falling down a slope.

• Terraced planter boxes. Slopes with good sun exposure (west- or south-facing) can be great for vegetable boxes, especially when flat space is limited and needed for other, higher priority uses. Embed planter boxes into a slope so the uphill edge is fairly buried, while the downhill side sticks up 18” or so from the slope below. Provide stable space to work around the boxes, and a set of stairs to access them. As with terraces, be modest with your planter box aspirations - one or two boxes is often all you need to scratch the gardening itch.

• Scenic Views. If your slope offers views, find a spot that balances easy accessibility, relatively mild slope angle, and scenic value, and shore it up with minimal retaining walls to create a lookout point. A comfy bench is all the furnishings you’ll need. The biggest expense for this feature is likely the path to get to it, so try to utilize existing routes when possible.

• Water feature. Utilize sloped terrain and rocky outcroppings to create a natural water feature. Not only will it look and sound peaceful, it will provide valuable water resources for migrating birds and butterflies. Take care to keep your design - and the system required to pump water through it - from getting too elaborate.

Planting Best Practices

No matter what you do with your slopes, you’ll have at least some parts that stay sloped. For those areas, and any others you intend to plant, here are a few key planting tips.

• Catch that water! Create small flat areas in a radius around new trees and plants to help detain water long enough for their roots to access it. Groundcover planting, rocks, and other elements that slow the flow of surface water are also helpful at making water available to plants.

• Irrigate with drip. The slow feed of water is less likely to be lost downhill. Supplement with occasional overhead hand watering. This will encourage plants to spread laterally, covering more soil and improving slope stability.

• Go Native: Because they’ve evolved to like local conditions, native plants tend to do the best with the least maintenance, and if placed appropriately, should require only minimal irrigation once established. 

• Be mindful with mulch. Mulch routinely gets swept downhill by rainfall. Shredded bark mulch can withstand erosion, but it ignites easily and is hazardous in areas prone to wildfires. Composted arbor mulch or wood chips offer greater fire resistance, but are more likely to slide downhill. Gravel mulch can withstand erosion better than bark mulch, but it too will wash downhill in heavy rain. Jute netting can be applied to hold mulch in place until it bonds with the soil. While functional, this can detract from the scenic value of a hillside. 

Our advice: minimize mulch and lean on native groundcover planting to cover sloped terrain. It will offer more slope stability than mulch, resist and reduce erosion, and improve scenic value, while also providing habitat and a host of other ecosystem services in the process.

Final Thoughts on Hillside Landscaping

Slopes do present some challenges, but we encourage you to look at them positively - what design potential do your slopes offer you? Work with your slopes, not against them. By understanding both what they require and what they can offer, you’ll set yourself up for a successful design!