All the most common questions we hear from clients before
embarking on an outdoor renovation project.

Yardzen is reinventing landscape design. Our delightful, all-online design process helps homeowners reimagine their outdoor spaces, including plants, hardscaping, functional spaces (kitchens, pergolas, playspaces), and the exterior of their home, including paint, siding, windows, doors, and roofing.

Yardzen’s talented team of designers and horticulturists use your photos and videos, combined with technology, data, and plant science, to design your outdoor spaces without ever stepping foot on your property. After completing the design portion of the process, we help connect you with a local, vetted contractor who can install your design.

Yardzen is for anyone who has a yard an outdoor space and wants to improve it.

Yardzen’s process and scope of work set us apart from traditional landscape design.

We created Yardzen as an alternative to the time and cost-intensive process of traditional landscape design. Through our online design studio, we empower homeowners and designers with technology, connecting clients with the best design talent, working on your timeline (no mid-day site visits), and keeping costs low.

In refining the process of landscape design, we’ve also realized the limitations of traditional landscaping’s scope of work. We design outdoor spaces that help our clients live better, more beautiful, and sustainable lives outside. We are a one-stop-shop for everything from plantings and hardscape to functional alfresco rooms and exterior design, including paint, windows and doors, and roofing.

Our favorite topic! Our core ethos is that anyone who has ownership over a patch of Earth has the responsibility to effect positive change. We’re a team of landscape designers & LEED-certified architects, environmental consultants, conservationists, even beekeepers. We’re here to empower people to make sustainable decisions about your outdoor spaces. As a general rule, every Yardzen design includes climate-adapted and pollinator-supporting plants. We believe that if we all do a little we can do a lot.

It’s just as important to share what we don’t do as it is to share what we do. Our designs are the “master plan” for your outdoor renovation and provide recommended materials, layout, and everything else a landscaping contractor should need to create a bid and begin work. That said, (and because we get this question a lot) our design packages don’t  include the actual cost of materials and installation of the design.

The local, vetted contractors in our Pro Network, who we’ll happily connect you to, can properly implement drainage and irrigation when it is time to break ground. Though at this time our designs don’t include drainage and irrigation plans.

Our designers have knowledge around basic codes like setback rules, easements, and fence heights (these don’t tend to vary much) but unique city-specific codes should be reported to us during the onboarding process.

If your design includes elements that are complex, custom, or not pre-fab, there’s a chance you’ll need to engage with a structural engineer or architect when it comes time to build because our designs don’t include construction-level details for elements like swimming pools, ADUs, second-story decks, gas-lines and electrical lines.

Yardzen designs can include essentially anything you might want in your outdoor space. This list is not exhaustive so if there’s something you don’t see here, but want, please reach out. We almost certainly can design it.

Patios, Decks, Swimming Pools, Pergolas, Pet Spaces, Kids’ Play Spaces, Trampolines, Hot Tubs and Spas, Fences, Saunas, Outdoor Kitchens, Firepits, Plunge Pools, Edible Gardens, Social Front Yards, Driveways, Front Entries, Garage Doors, Exterior Siding. (And more! Just ask.)

After purchasing a Yardzen design package, we’ll take you to our Yard Builder™, where you’ll share photos and videos, inspiration images, answer a couple of questions about your preferences and how you want to use your outdoor space, and take a style quiz!

After you submit your pre-design materials, we’ll get to work on creating a 3D model of your home and property, which will serve as the canvas on which we create your design. You’ll receive your House Model about a week after submitting your materials.

Three to four weeks following the House Model, you’ll receive the first draft of your photorealistic renders. One reason we love using renders throughout the design process is this allows our clients to envision their future outdoor space and provide detailed feedback in our Feedback Studio. This part of the journey is interactive and iterative. We’ll respond to all of your questions and feedback and get to work implementing your changes.

At the end of the design process, you’ll receive your final design, which includes photorealistic renders, CAD plans, and a thorough plant and furniture list. If you signed up for an exterior design package, you’ll also receive a detailed list of materials, including paint colors.

Once we’ve finalized your designs, we shift toward bringing your new outdoor space to life. We’ll connect you to a vetted contractor in your area to get your design installed. If we don’t yet have a vetted pro in your area, we’ll work to research, vet and identify a contractor we expect to be a good fit for your project.

Yardzen works with hundreds of highly skilled designers who practice in the full spectrum of landscape and exterior styles. We guarantee that we have a designer who specializes in your specific aesthetic. Check out our Portfolio to see more.

At the beginning of the Yardzen design process, you’ll take a thorough style quiz, answer a number of questions about your yard’s form and function, and share inspiration photos. From all of this information, we’ll have a good sense of exactly what you’re imagining for your outdoor space.

Yardzen designers are industry stars, with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in design and landscape architecture. We’ve created a unique platform for talented professionals to work on projects like yours. Think of Yardzen as an opportunity to have exceptional talent work on your outdoor space in a way that’s also incredibly efficient for you.

As a Yardzen client, you’ll have a talented team of professionals working behind the scenes on your design, including a designer or architect, a horticulturist, a build expert, and our fantastic Customer Support team. Our CS team is at the ready to answer any questions and relay any pertinent information to your design team. After completing tens of thousands of landscape designs and experimenting with many approaches, we’ve settled on this process as the most delightful and efficient experience for all involved.

We’ve built a world-class database of plants, trees, and groundcovers that match up to planting zones, sun, shade, and water requirements, styles, and special features, like “deer-proof,” “non-toxic for pets,” and “year-round blooms.”

After you purchase a package, you’ll have the opportunity to take a plant-preferences quiz during your onboarding. Additionally, we use satellite imagery, coupled with detailed photos and videos of your property, to assess sun and shade patterns throughout the day. We have a horticulturist who makes the final calls when choosing your design’s plant palette.

Yardzen designs in all states across the United States! We have experts in every microclimate and style who can design and build a sustainable yard in your unique space.

At Yardzen, “exterior design” refers to exterior-of-home design choices, like paint, siding, windows, doors, roofing, lighting, and decor, that when combined with landscape design creates your dream outdoor space. Learn more about Yardzen’s exterior design offerings.

Over the last two years, we’ve realized how closely coupled a home’s exterior is with its landscaping. In fact, the only time you experience your yard without your home’s exterior is when you’re inside looking out. Paint, siding, windows, and doors are the backdrop for your yard’s plants, hardscape, functional spaces, and furniture.

Yardzen’s Curb Appeal package, for your home’s front facade, and Outdoor Transformation package, for your entire home, include both custom landscape design and exterior design.

The Curb Appeal package bundles our custom landscape design services with our exterior design offerings to help homeowners envision the full potential of their home’s front facade. Includes:

Exterior paint selection
Exterior doors and windows
Wood and stone accents
Garage doors
Shutters
Siding or exterior resurfacing
Exterior-of-home lighting
Roofing
House numbers and other exterior hardware
Mailboxes

The Outdoor Transformation bundles our custom landscape design services with our exterior design offerings for the entirety of your home, helping homeowners envision the full potential of their home’s outdoor spaces. Includes:

Exterior paint selection
Exterior doors and windows
Wood and stone accents
Garage doors
Shutters
Siding or exterior resurfacing
Exterior-of-home lighting
Roofing
House numbers
Mailboxes

Yardzen works with several fantastic partners, including Benjamin Moore, Marvin Windows and Doors, and William Sonoma’s Rejuvenation to make specific materials recommendations, including paint colors.

We don’t currently offer contractor matching for our exterior design service, but we are actively building our network and hope to be able to serve our clients soon.

That’s up to you! But rarely does any design — landscape, interior, or whole home — get built exactly as scoped. We encourage you to think of your conceptual designs as a communication tool to convey a vision to your licensed contractor. Your final designs will include CAD plans with dimensions, planting layout, specific plant names, and basic materials callouts, but some last-mile design decisions will be made in the field with the help of your contractor.

At the beginning of the Yardzen design process, you’ll go through our proprietary Yard Builder™ exercise to help you understand what configuration of hardscape, softscape, and exterior elements will work in your outdoor space, and at what budget. With that knowledge, you’ll share your all-in budget with your design team. (For people who plan to phase their build out, as many of our clients do, this is the budget for all phases.) Your designer will then create your design with that number in mind. However, there are always variables — like the materials and plant sizes you ultimately choose — that can bring down costs. When we match you with a contractor, budget is usually where that conversation starts. We believe budget needs to be a central part of the process for us to deliver a design you can implement. Please note we recommend a minimum budget of $15,000 to take advantage of our contractor matching services.

Every design package comes with one thorough round of revisions.  (We offer additional revisions for $295.) The vast majority of our clients arrive at a delightful design with our standard process, and many collaborate directly with their contractor on last-mile design decisions. Since it’s common to make final design decisions in the field, we will happily make revisions to your CAD plans without charge. We call those “red lines” in the construction world.

We partner only with the best, most responsive and diligent contractors for our clients’ projects. We are very intentional about who we bring into our network. Here are some of the following criteria that we make sure our contractors have before bringing them on:

Licensing as required by each individual state
Professional, personable and offer exceptional customer service
Top notch online reviews
Impressive and comprehensive portfolio
Worker’s Compensation and Employers’ Liability Insurance
Commercial General Liability
Automobile Liability Insurance
Professional Liability Insurance

There is no obligation to use one of our in network contractors, however, our clients find great value in being introduced to a trusted, dedicated, and vetted professional. We aim to connect you deliberately to a pro who is well versed in your project, location, and budget so that you feel supported and prepared throughout your entire installation.

The Yardzen Pro Network is growing every day, but there are cases where we don’t yet have a Pro who meets our high bar in certain areas. This is most common in rural areas with a low overall supply of contractors, or in areas where we’re newly offering our designs services. In these cases we’ll put forth a best effort to find and vet a landscape contractor who can bring your design to life.