Landscape & Pool Design

What Is Landscape & Pool Design?

Landscape and pool design represents the full breadth of our design work — from front landscape beds to complete backyard environments with pools, patios, pavilions, retaining walls, kitchens, and fire features.

Our Design Engagements are structured and tested. The focus is creative planning first — resolving layout, proportion, and spatial relationships before.

Permitting and installation documentation are developed once a project is scheduled and prepared for production. Because design and construction remain connected, nothing lost in translation. Good design serves both the creative vision and the realities of installation.

Design Considerations

Every project begins with understanding what you're going for. What are you imagining? How do you want to use the space? Where do you naturally gather? Are you going for entertaining, curb appeal or to unwind? Should the space feel expansive and social — or peaceful and secluded?

We start by establishing criteria for the early concepts: view angles, foot traffic, gathering zones, elevation differences, and how things like a pool deck or pavilion shapes the experience. From there, we test ideas — and sometimes intentionally break them — to see what ideas emerge. We then draw these conceptual ideas for our Draft meeting.

Movement through the space is also important. You shouldn’t have to squeeze around furniture, cut across wet deck to reach the lawn, or route guests through private areas to access the back.

Homeowners benefit most when they think beyond individual elements and consider how the entire space interacts with itself. Think less, "placing features" and more "shaping space."

How It’s Done

While early brainstorming begins with hand sketches, the design moves into a 3D CAD program early in the process. Working in CAD allows us to draw to scale using exact site measurements and 3D scans of your property.

We measure elevations with tools like Zip-levels and verify distances on site. Concepts are built against real topography, not assumptions. Creative exploration still leads the process — but if something isn’t feasible, we identify that before construction begins.

Rendered models allow us to walk through the space digitally and produce fly-through videos for discussion and refinement. The same model becomes the foundation for technical documentation.

Designing in CAD also allows us to quantify materials accurately. We can measure square footage, linear footage, excavation volumes, and utility distances directly from the model. We are not estimating deck size by eye or guessing how far a gas line needs to run.

Installation details are developed in the same environment as the design. Pool layouts are drawn in-house and sent to our engineer for review and stamping. Pavilion and structural concepts are coordinated with licensed professionals for final stamped drawings. Permitting and HOA submittals are prepared from the same working model.

Maintaining continuity from concept through documentation reduces misinterpretation during construction and keeps the project aligned with the original design intent.

Pricing Factors

Design fees vary based on scope and site complexity.

Projects centered around patio and landscape reconfiguration typically begin around $1,000–$2,500 in design services. Projects with pools, pavilions or a complicated version of a service (like decks) often range from $3,000–$5,000+

Primary cost drivers include:

• Pools or pavilions
• Engineered retaining walls
• Complicated decks or grading
• Elevation change (ex: kitchens are flat and quick to draw, retaining walls have larger elevation differences
• Overall scale of property - how much do we have to measure