by kellie abrahamson kabrahamson1@aol.com
On home-makeover and design shows we always hear about bringing the outside in. Landscape designers do the opposite. EU was able to catch up with Tony Evans of 5 Star Landscape Design, a locally owned and operated company. Tony was happy to talk with us about landscape design, expressing personal style through landscaping and the services his company offers.
“Landscape designers create outdoor rooms,” he explained. “The way we approach it is, just like an architect designs a house, they try to create a floor plan that works as you walk through the rooms, making each of those rooms functional. We try to do the same thing outside: create an area for entertaining, an area for an outdoor kitchen, an area for relaxing. It’s really the same thing that you do inside your house, but you’re just extending the living area outside.”
Unlike basic lawn care service, landscape designers us plants as a tool, not the main focus.
“The way that I view plants is they are just another material to create the feel of the room that we want,” Evans said. “So, if we create a row of plants, it’s going to create a wall, or maybe a certain type of plant that’s going to have a canopy that kind of makes it look like a ceiling. So, to me plants are just another material I use the same as I’d use brick or stone or concrete.”
Once you decide what space you would like to transform, a landscape designer will listen to what you want and try to make it a reality.
“The first thing I do when I come in is I don’t talk a lot. I just listen to how they want to use their space and then I try to interpret that,” Evans said. He later explained that you should consider what the area will be used for. “Do you cook a lot outside? Do you grill a lot? Do you want a pool? Do you want a play area for the kids? ... [Once we know that] then we design appropriately.”
Once you’ve done the brainstorming, the designer goes to work.
“The next step that we do is we’ll go out, myself and my other designer, and we’ll spend some time on the site and really just look at it,” Tony explains. “I always go back to that same example of just like an architect designs the house to make it flow, we look. Is there slopes? Should we terrace it? What are the views like from inside the house? How do you walk from out of your living room and how do you approach that space? Is there French doors? Is there a very small door? Is there views outside? So, we’ll go do a site analysis, that’s the first step, to see what’s going on on the site. And then we come up with a preliminary plan, then we meet with the client again, make any design revisions as necessary and then we budget everything and then go into construction on it.”
Getting your yard from humdrum to fabulous won’t happen overnight. Evans said depending on the scale of your project, it can take anywhere from two to six months, especially if you want to incorporate a new pool into the space.
“It can take some time but… I always tell my clients it’s not cheap to remodel houses… it can get expensive remodeling your outdoors as well and it really makes sense if you’re going to make that kind of investment to really plan it out instead of just [saying] ‘hey, let’s just slap a patio here and throw some plants over there.’ It really makes financial sense to plan it out before you start investing that money.”
And, what an investment it is! On top of having a wonderful outdoor living space to use for everything from relaxing to entertaining, according to Smart Money magazine by spending 5 percent of the total value of your home on landscaping, and doing it wisely, you can add 15 percent or more to the value of your home. That’s a nice return!
For more information or to get Tony and his crew to come make an outdoor room out of your yard, visit 5starwebsite.com or call (904) 962-7378.
|
EU Critic’s Choice Awards
