Professional landscape designers are pros at reimagining yards, efficiently creating and communicating new landscape visions to achieve the look, feel, and function that homeowners want while remaining attuned to the local climate and landscape.

While DIY landscape or garden design can work for those with experience and time, it often leads to budget creep and higher final project costs. Too often, piecemeal design and installation results in hodgepodge spaces with poor flow, inconsistent style, and unhappy plants.

High quality landscapes can add up to 20% to your property value as well increase your quality of life at home and time spent outside, benefits that greatly outweigh the fee to hire a professional designer for your home improvement project.

Learn more about the benefits of using a professional vetted landscape designer.

There are many benefits to online landscape design services like Yardzen including cost, accessibility, and convenience. Our clients often share that they were able to receive a higher quality design faster and at lower cost than what they’ve received working with busy local landscaping companies.

How are we able to do this? Using photos and videos of your property, your answers to our style and plant-preference quizzes, and satellite imagery to assess property and light conditions, we’ll create a landscape design tailored to your region, personal preferences, and unique property.

To ensure you get the right plants for your project, our designers use our world-class plants database, which factors in everything from climate zones, light conditions, and water requirements to special characteristics like “deer-proof,” “pet-safe,” and “year-round interest”. Our designs are also reviewed by an expert horticulturalist who makes the final calls when choosing your design’s plant palette.

Our database also includes hardscape materials and popular amenities like water features, fire pits, pavers, patios, walkways, pergolas, outdoor kitchens, swimming pools, decks, and furniture for outdoor living spaces from partners like Crate & Barrel, Yardbird, TimberTech, and Solo Stove, allowing the dream yard in your design to truly come to life.

Exceptional customer experience is one of our core values. Our team is full of experts in everything from native plants in your zone to the cost of building the yard features you want. We can solve any question and will be with you from the start of the design process until the last plant is in the ground.

Unlike a DIY design software, Yardzen connects you with industry-leading landscape designers, who apply their skill and creativity to get you the design of your dreams efficiently and at a fraction of the price of traditional landscape design services.

While finding a landscape designer requires some homework, but a little vetting up front will pay dividends down the road.

These are traits we look and train for with our remote designers:

Expertise. If you want to include paving revisions along with planting design, make sure your designer is well-versed in both hardscape and softscape design. Look for client reviews to get a sense of the quality of a designer’s work.

Stylistic fit. Before you sign a designer on, look at their portfolio to ensure their work suits your style.

Strong communication skills. Good designers are good listeners, taking care to ensure they fully understand your goals and priorities. They‘re also excellent at describing their work through speech, writing, and visual means. Clear, productive communication is crucial to a successful project.

Collaborative approach. The best design outcomes come from a mutually-respectful, collaborative relationship between client and designer. Find a designer you trust and feel comfortable working with. Remember: collaboration is a two-way street. Do your part as a client to know when to defer to a designer’s judgment.

Professionalism. Good designers produce high quality work in a timely, efficient, and respectful manner.

It‘s also good to ask friends and neighbors for suggestions if they’ve worked with a landscape designer they are happy with.

While you can find a designer on your own, the process can be stressful and time-consuming. By instantly connecting you with a vetted, top-tier landscape designer, Yardzen removes this burden and gets you straight to the fun part: designing your yard.

Yardzen’s community of landscape designers are experts in their industry with proven experience creating high end custom outdoor spaces across a variety of climates and styles. We keep the bar high and only bring on designers that have demonstrated the excellent design, technical, and communication skills necessary to create custom landscape designs that meet our standards and that our clients will be thrilled with.

Designers take on projects based on how well their expertise aligns with your project details like region, style preference, and desired functionality. Collaboration with our customer success and project management teams ensures that you get continuous communication throughout the design process and receive a finished design that exceeds your expectations.

Yardzen is committed to the personal and professional development of our landscape designers, who participate in continuing education and coaching from experts in the design, horticulture, and construction fields.

If you’re searching for a local landscape designer on your own, be sure to vet them in a similar way. Ask about their credentials and references from past clients. See if they can share examples of past design deliverables for projects similar to yours, and what the design process and communication looks like from start to finish.

Traditional landscape design services commonly cost anywhere from $5000 – $8000 or more, with prices rising significantly with project size.

By comparison, Yardzen‘s design packages range in price from $649 to $5095. With Yardzen, you’ll get industry-leading design quality and a fun, efficient, and thorough design process – all at a fraction of what you’d pay to a traditional design studio.

Whether you’re looking to redesign your front yard, backyard, or entire property, focusing on landscape only or throwing in your home’s exterior design to boost curb appeal and overall style, Yardzen has a package to meet your needs.

While the precise steps you must take to fully develop a landscape design will vary with each project, this is a recommended general sequence to follow when developing a landscape design:

Set goals and priorities. Clearly articulated goals and priorities are a roadmap to keep a project on course from start to finish.

If you are DIYing, we suggest starting small – too often doing everything at once results in doing nothing. If you are working with a designer, you can safely expand your ambition, so long as it suits your budget.

Set a budget. It’s ok to adjust a budget to better suit goals and priorities, or to reduce scope to better suit a fixed budget.

Bottom line, get a realistic understanding of what you want to spend and what that can accommodate, and let that guide the scope of your design. Nobody enjoys having to reduce design scope due to surprise budget overruns.

Gather inspiration. Take time to clarify what you like, and what you don’t. As you hunt for inspiration, pay attention not only to individual elements, but to how different elements sit with one another.

A clear understanding of your inspiration allows you to set parameters for design decisions, and helps you to select elements that will feel cohesive together.

Function first. Make a basic bubble diagram, putting circles in various parts of the yard where you’d like each function to be located: kitchen here, hot tub there, fire pit over there.

Focal Points. Set your focal points – their position will influence the shape and orientation of gathering spaces, and in turn the routing of paths.

Add circulation + define spaces. Paths carry you through the yard, but they also define spatial boundaries. When you add a path, you also determine the size and shape of spaces along its sides.

Determine the size and shape you want for your spaces, and design paths to achieve those outcomes while also providing pleasant, efficient routes through the design.

Design hardscape. When choosing hardscape materials, aim for a compelling and cohesive palette that suits your budget, achieves your style, and will perform well in your local climate.

Look to your priorities to see which areas merit the most expenditure, and which can receive a more cost-effective approach.

Design planting. Planting design can be very complex, but above all, remember: right plant, right place. Choose plants that are suitable for the climate and light conditions of any given area on the site.

As lovers of the local climate, native plants typically require fewer inputs of water, fertilizer, and maintenance than species introduced from elsewhere. With natives, you’ll get great plant performance with less expense and fuss.

At the same time, native plants offer unmatched habitat value for local wildlife, and help designed landscapes feel connected to the broader regional landscape.

Talk to your local nursery or your designer to determine which native species are best for your landscape project.

Iterate. With an initial draft in place, review it with fresh eyes. Trusted partners are valuable for second opinions.

Few designs are perfect out the gate – have patience and embrace iteration.

Build. Once you land on your final design, you are ready to build!

Tip: when working with a contractor, the build process begins with cost estimation. This process can sometimes lead to further design changes. This is normal, and productive! It is far better to continue revising to get the design fully ready prior to installation than to have to reverse course midway through construction.