How does the garden design process work?

Hiring a garden designer is not like hiring a contractor, where you approve a quote and see the result at the end. Good design is decided slowly and revealed quickly.

Most people have hired a contractor at some point. Maybe a painter, a roofer, someone to redo a bathroom. The process is familiar: get a quote, approve it, show up at the end and see how it turned out.

Hiring a garden designer is different. It is more personal, more collaborative, and more involved than most people expect, in a good way. But if you have never done it, it can feel unclear. What actually happens? How long does it take? What do you need to have figured out before you call?

It starts with a conversation, not a contract

Before anything is drawn, signed, or scheduled, there is a conversation. A good designer wants to hear about your property, how you use it, what is bothering you about it, and what you are hoping for. This is not a sales call. It is both sides figuring out whether the fit is right.

A designer who skips this step and jumps straight to a quote is solving a problem she has not understood yet. At The Grass Girl, every project starts with a phone call. If that conversation confirms we are a good fit, we schedule a paid on-site consultation, and that is where the real work begins. I want to know about your property, but I also want to know how you live outside.

Then comes the site visit

Before I ever meet a client on their property, I have usually already been there. Not officially. I will drive by on my own, pull up aerial photos and old listings. I want my first impression of the land to be mine alone, without anyone else's narrative layered on top of it yet. What catches my eye when no one is pointing anything out? What is the light doing at that hour?

I am a deeply visual person. I trained as a fine artist before I became a garden designer, and I retain an almost photographic impression of a site after that first encounter. A new project will start running on its own in my head, sometimes for days, before I ever put pen to paper. I am composing while I am driving, while I am cooking dinner, while I am walking my own garden. By the time I sit down to sketch, I have already been designing.

When I do meet you on site, I am looking at things most people do not notice. The way water wants to move across your yard after a Tennessee downpour. A grade change that feels like a problem but is actually an opportunity. The angle where your back porch frames a treeline that deserves to be the focal point of the whole design. I am reading your property the way I would read a painting, as a composition with weight, balance, light, and movement.

The design develops in stages

The early stage is about alignment, making sure the designer and the client are seeing the same garden before anyone invests weeks of drawing time. Think of it as agreeing on the story before writing the book. This is where aesthetic direction, priorities, and scope get locked in so the design solves the right problems from the start.

How deep that early work goes depends on the project. A focused courtyard redesign is a different undertaking than a multi-acre property with grading challenges, water movement, and exposures that change dramatically across seasons. For larger or more complex sites, the designer may need to study the property over time, visiting in different seasons to understand how light moves, where water collects after a hard rain, where shade falls in June versus October. You cannot design well for a site you have only seen once on a Tuesday in March.

What you receive at the end

A completed garden design is not a sketch on a napkin. It is a buildable document, or set of documents, that specifies layout, plantings, materials, and intent so that a qualified contractor can execute it. The best design packages also include notes that communicate why certain decisions were made, so the design intent survives the build.

A good designer is also thinking past installation day. The garden has to work in year three, not just the week the photos are taken, so you should expect guidance on how to care for what has been designed, what needs attention and when, and how the garden will evolve over time.

I have designed and gardened in Middle Tennessee long enough now that my projects have become something like ongoing experiments, some hypotheses proven, many disproven. I know which plants will actually thrive in our clay, which ones the books say should work but will not, and which combinations look beautiful in May but leave you with nothing to look at by September. That kind of knowledge does not come from a catalog.

How to know if you are ready

You do not need to have everything figured out before you reach out. You do not need a Pinterest board or a plant list or a budget nailed down to the dollar. What helps most is knowing what is bothering you about your current space and having a general sense of what you want to feel when the project is finished.

If you are building a new home, the best time to bring in a garden designer is earlier than you think, ideally before the house is fully framed, so the landscape and the architecture can be designed as one experience. If you already live in the home, the best time is whenever the space starts frustrating you more than you can ignore.

How the studio works

I take on a handful of residential projects a year in Middle Tennessee. I work with each client individually, not with a team or a junior designer working from my notes. The process is thorough, personal, and clear. You will know what you are getting, what it costs, and how long it will take before you commit to anything.

What I am really doing is looking at your land as a piece of living art, not just a home landscape. I am exploring the site's possibilities and working with you to create something that has a foundation of permanence and beauty, something artistic and rooted in what will actually grow here and benefit the daily rhythms of your life. That takes time, and I take that time up front to do my best work.