Services

Are the spring weeds popping off? Do those old shrubs need an overhaul? Are you overwhelmed with life’s tasks, and want to take yard care off your plate? Do you know what needs tending, but aren’t sure how?

Schedule an initial consult so I can create a maintenance plan just for you, incorporating your priorities alongside some basic principles of habitat gardening. Maintenance is my bread and butter, and includes:
fine gardening
pruning
weeding
soil care
drip irrigation
vine training
perennial maintenance
planting
habitat support

I am a registered business with the Backyard Habitat Certification Program, administered by the Bird Alliance of Oregon and the Columbia Land Trust. The program supports homeowners to manage their land using easy-to-understand criteria that creates bird and insect habitat.

As a BHCP registered business, I can help you pursue certification through my maintenance, design, and consultations. Note that I do not certify backyard habitats myself, nor am I employed by BHCP. Once we get talking about certification, I will connect you with the staff and volunteers who guide the process.

Click the logo below for more details about the program. It’s wonderful!

Slow Redesign

Normally, I “slow redesign” with long-term maintenance clients, one garden bed at a time. With this approach, I work with you over a few seasons to carefully observe your landscape, understand its possibilities, pinpoint your desires, and manifest changes as a vision emerges.

Why “slow redesign”? The process tends to be less pressureful and labor-intensive for both me and my clients. There’s more time to feel-out different priorities (which often compete!), the costs are cheaper overall, there’s time to get things just right, and the results tend to be more sustainable and satisfying.
All things being equal, it’s my preferred approach to landscape design.

Formal Landscape Design

This plan of action is perfect if you simply feel dissatisfied with your garden. Perhaps there aren’t many salvageable or habitat-supporting elements in the space, you’re working with some time constraints, and/or you’re simply ready to hit the reset button on a yard that doesn’t work for you.

How does the landscape design process work?
Formal landscape design starts with a series of carefully focused consultations, kind of like interviews. Through this, a series of increasingly specific draft plans evolve into a final design for your yard. The design will include a list of specific plants to install, and a hand-drawn plan for where to place them in the landscape. Along the way, I often connect clients with trusted landscape contractors to install the hardscaping (stone pathways, walls, etc.), and then they pass the baton back to me. I deal with the plants and soil: sourcing, planting, and finishing off the landscape with drip irrigation, soil amendments, etc.

This approach to landscape design is great for effecting comprehensive change to your yard. And you’ll get a set of gorgeous and helpful design documents for your reference, perusal, and enjoyment.

I’ve never encountered a client who doesn’t hold a mental dossier of questions about their yard and the plants living there. Often, these questions have been held for years or even decades, and may become an ongoing sense of worry. Consultations and training sessions have been incredibly empowering and enlightening for clients–opening new and less fearful, less hesitant ways of relating to their gardens.

You may have specific plant-related questions (how do I prune this? what can I plant to support wildlife? what’s this plant? what’s this disease?) You may want to work in your garden but aren’t sure where to start. You may feel motivated to learn about plants and garden maintenance, and want some 1:1 support rather than relying on decontextualized books and videos. You may have decision fatigue and want someone to just tell you what to do next. Or you may need a second opinion on a design schema.

If these ring true ^, schedule a consult with me!

There is a vast array of expertise in the world of landscaping and gardening. What I can provide is information, instruction and advice shared with integrity. I keep one eye trained on supporting habitat, another eye on your personal capacities and context, and yet another (!) pointed toward tasteful garden aesthetics. Throughout it all, I am very aware of my areas of knowledge, as well as its limits and where to look when I don’t know the answers. When you hear “I don’t know, but let me ask”– that’s one sign of an honest gardener.

I’m a careful listener with a previous career as a teacher: I work hard to identify what you already know, focus on sharing what’s useful from that orientation, and check for your understanding. I wasn’t born with a green thumb: I had to teach myself how to be good with plants. These combined experiences mean I’m uniquely positioned to make our conversations and consultations useful to you.

Initial 1-hour consultation (toward future design or maintenance work) ~ FREE

Garden maintenance ~ $50/hr.

Consultation and training ~ $75/hr.

Landscape design ~ I can prepare a design estimate based on our initial design consultation. Design-only projects include consultations, plant lists, and/or drafting, and have ranged from $300 to $1,200. Design projects involving installation and/or subcontracting (wherein I subcontract landscape contractors, and I do site preparation, planting, and finishing) have ranged from $800 to $20,000. Costs vary based on size of property and granularity of design process. I can tailor my designs to most clients’ budgets!

Sliding scale available for disabled and/or BIPOC folks who are low-income. Let’s talk!