Design Process

CONCEPT | MASTER | DEVELOPMENT OR REVISIONS | CONSTRUCTION DOCS (OPTIONAL)

OUR SERVICES

PLAN DESIGN

INSTALL MAINTAIN

Rebecca’s Gardens landscape designers proudly partner with top tier landscape builders Outdoor Craftsmen. Engage any service independently or be expertly guided as we jointly meet your project needs. Together we design and install leading sustainable and regenerative landscapes for authentic living. Custom inquires welcome.

SAMPLE FULL PROJECT FLOW

———- HOW WE WORK ———-

PHASE ONE Begin your project with Rebecca’s Gardens. Here we listen and create solutions for your goals. We Introduce, Learn, Organize, Research, Plan, Design, and Evolve. Receive master gardener knowledge to help integrate your needs with the needs of the environment. We support regenerative processes and local connections wherever possible.

PHASE TWO Build your vision and keep making it better throughout implementation. Here our partners at Outdoor Craftsmen will Translate our design, and diligently Source, Install and Maintain your landscape solution. You will estimate and contract separately with them for your installation. You can trust their commitment to excellence in workmanship, and detailed communication at every stage, giving you choice and flexibility throughout.

Benefits Of Integrating Our Specialization With our combined expertise, we offer an exceptional win-win design and install experience from start to finish. Good people make magic. We invite you to enjoy the process as well as the result.

Just Need Maintenance? A Sketch or A Strategy?

INDEPENDENT SERVICES

Garden Planning

Garden Planning is a consult or series of consults. It is comprised of anything you need it to be— such as a strategy, a sketch, a resource list, a solution to an issue, or all of the above. We may also be able to provide a rough-estimate range for your idea. When you garden plan with us, you might…

(A) Visualize your yard (B) Organize and schedule your goals in detail (C) Get industry experienced recommendations (C) Have a plan to give to the maintenance team (D) Option for custom DIY action-list for yourself (E) Access fresh ideas and solutions with our experience in planning and design, such as:

• What plants are best where? What materials are recommended? How best to nurture my soil?

• What do I need to listen to from the environment or take into account once I have an idea I want to implement?

• What action steps need to happen before/as we get started?

• What irrigation adjustments will be most impactful?

• What is a sample estimate range for labor and for plants/materials in this industry?

• What options do we have to prioritize certain goals within budget?

We provide hourly consultations with an experienced Garden Specialist who will meet with you to come up with an organized approach, plant list, visual concept, or other relevant deliverable. We also help with specific issues or show you how to lead your goals in the best direction.

Garden Planning is a flexible service for anyone who wishes to tap into our expertise to suit your specific needs. Features a highly customized session or monthly series, designed to help support you every step of the way. Think: a curated care plan just for you and your garden.

Can be used in preparation for, or independent of, our full service design process:

DESIGN: Landscape Design +

Architectural Drafting

Engage our full service landscape design and work with a creative designer. Or gain additional expertise with a small dedicated team. From enhancements to from-the-ground-up installations, we bring your property to life. We work with residential, commercial, and agricultural properties of all sizes. Our process includes an initial conceptual sketch (or Garden Plan) and revisions into a Master Plan with full Plant + Material list. Construction documents can be drafted as required, usually outsourced from or in tandem with a 3rd party architectural engineer. If you are planning both Design + Install, during the design phase of your project, you will be referred to our partner for installation. You may also choose to accept a bid from another source at your discretion.

Our services make use of our decade-plus experience with horticultural, herbal, and vegetable gardens, soft and hardscapes, soil, irrigation, and microclimate requirements, and local resources. Our offerings come complete with helpful recommendations and continuing care information.

Our work focuses on beauty, ecology, education, and building awareness of the interconnected life of people and land

With industry leading experience here on the front range, we provide you with strategic tools to realize your goals, including: best strategies, professional networks, informational resources, helpful DIY guidance, logistical planning, and nuanced plant or material selections to achieve your goals in harmony with nature’s.

OUR PHILOSOPHY

To achieve your goal, our work is based on purpose, passion, and values. We build each beautiful landscape from a foundation for structural integrity and ecological health that supports you at various levels in your enjoyment of sustainable living. We invest in quality relationships and long term vision. We aim to work with nature’s principles to create a functionally beautiful space with unique features and a sense of connection. Interwoven principles, from use-of-space, to biodiversity, are active throughout our design process and applied alongside our targeted methods for best results.

We support a multiple bottom line philosophy, or spectrum of economies that include defining wealth in interconnected sectors such as health, social, emotional, wisdom, ecological, time, and resources, in addition to financial. This values-based perspective provides helpful strategies through which to plan for your ideal life-goals both during the process and when living with the completed project. With your values in mind, we can customize to suit your budget and taste. Small or grand, you're in good hands with Rebecca's Gardens Design.

INSTALLATION REFERALS

While we do not provide labor, installation, or project management services, we recommend you to reliable partners who do. We partner independently with industry leading local landscape businesses, each with an experienced installation team and manager, to whom we refer you. Now that you have your design and chosen elements mapped out, you can seamlessly hand it over to our recommended (or your independently-chosen) installer to see it come to life. Hiring a separate installation specialist and/or project management supervisor is always at the discretion of the client. Your design goes further, too, for additional property specialists may also benefit from referring to your master plan, such as Irrigation, or maintenance parties. Not sure who to turn to? Need a referral for comparison? Just ask.

MAINTENANCE REFERALS

REMINDER: We refer installations, clean ups, and regular maintenance to our independent industry partners or to a trusted 3rd party independent specialist. Contact us for your custom referral. Rather than create an in-house install team with crew management, this allows us to focus on our plans + design with you, to give your project the attention, wisdom, and communication needed for your success. With your design in hand, we are open to communicating with a wide community of specialists as necessary to fulfill your vision. As such we look forward to providing an inspired and evolving plan for your earth based needs.

HORTICULTURAL GARDEN DESIGN

ALL SEASON | XERISCAPE

• Groundcovers and Flowers

• Succulents + Grasses

• Shrubs + Trees

• Choice Seeds or Bulbs

• Soil Cultivation

• Composting Recommendations

• Holistic Solutions + Recommendations

• Outdoor Porch Planters

• Pathways + Other Features

HARDSCAPE DESIGN

ENVIRONMENTS WITH STONE OR PATIO

VIEW DESIGN EXAMPLES

• Landscape Design | Planning

• Incorporation Of Existing Natural Elements

• Native Plants | Trees | Shrubs | Flowers

• Entrances | Patios | Private Spaces

• Borders | Walkways | Retaining Walls

• Natural Boulders | Statues | Artful Planters

• Pergolas | Trellises | Shade Trees

• Berms | Leveling | Soil Fill or Replacement

• Custom Stonework | Terraced Hillsides

• Mulch | Gravel | Flagstone | Unique Materials

OUR CONSULTS

INTRODUCE ESTIMATE CREATE

Call 303 | 915 | 4483

Schedule A Free Initial Assessment + Estimate

$ Receive A Robust Consult + Estimate With Resource Planning + Deliverables

$$ Request A Garden Plan For Any Size Project

$$$ Engage Expert Design + Install + Maint

What’s In A Consult

INTRODUCTION + ESTIMATE. Start with your initial walk through (30-60 min) to familiarize us with your property. We hear your ideas and collect data. We make note of your goals, perceptions, and the needs of the environment. We help answer questions, offer clarification, experience, and vision, and we recommend ideas or solutions. We may even do a little research before we follow up. We allow our experience to serve as we look at best options with you.

Receive a free estimate with relevant options and service pricing. With relevant info on the table, we can discuss a plan to meet your preferences and outline clear steps to achieve your goals. If we are estimating for a full Design and Install, you will receive an estimate broken out into those 2 parts, reflecting our two specializations, for the most accurate range.

• SCHEDULE AN INITIAL ON SITE WALK THRU

• INTRODUCE VISION, OPPORTUNITIES, LOGISTICS, BUDGET

• RECEIVE ROUGH ESTIMATE

• ASK QUESTIONS + CLARIFY PREFERENCES + HONE GOALS

• UPDATE ESTIMATE, SCHEDULE, BUDGET

• MOVE FORWARD AS PLANNED

Begin Your Design / Install

We will apply the cost of your extended consultation to your new design project. Estimates available by request:

DESIGN

• INTAKE QUESTIONS + RESEARCH

• REVIEW INITIAL CONCEPT DRAWINGS

• REVISE + REITERATE

• REVIEW MASTER DESIGN

• REVIEW WITH INSTALLATION PARTNER

INSTALL

• RESERVE SPOT IN INSTALLATION SCHEDULE

• TRANSLATION + IMPLEMENTATION OF DESIGN

• MATERIAL SOURCING

• YOUR DESIGN COMES TO LIFE

Get more than just a number estimate. For a small initial fee get a clear, customized walk-through of the project from all angles. Helpful data and perspective up front make a big difference in the result. Start your landscape design with peace of mind.

GOT A PROJECT IN MIND?

ALL SIZES WELCOME

Small or Grand, you’re in good hands. You may have need of a full design team, or just one designer as your dedicated specialist. Dream it ~ Design it. All projects are welcome.

WHAT’S YOUR PROCESS 

INITIAL WALK THROUGH

Meet with Rebecca on site for an initial walk through (1hr) of your property or area in question. Working from a simple yet effective assessment, we will address your desired focus and draw your attention to anything necessary to help you achieve your goals, including: overall vision, recommended approaches, best practices, industry comparisons, or DIY tips as relevant. 

STRATEGY

Receive a private website page and/or PDF by email outlining the information discussed in the initial assessment. An overview of the basic project requirements, potential type of service providers needed, rough timeframe within budget, and recommendations for research or next steps are provided. A week or so is typically given in between the 2 meeting times — useful for recommended research, information gathering or considerations on both the clients and our ends.

FOLLOW UP

So you have your plan of action. What’s next? A follow up meeting (1hr) may be helpful via phone or zoom as to clarify your options and to discuss implementation or educated next steps toward your goal. Essentially, you can continue to evolve your Garden Plan into a Master Design, which can then be installed by a recommended local company.

RECOMMENDED NEXT STEPS

Plan your next steps in sync with the way you work best. Everyone is unique, and therefore even with structured project phases, every project will also be unique. Here are some options for how we work with you. If our planning and design services can help, we make them available to you at each step. If curated DIY resources are your best option, we’ll invite you to access our media + website resource ‘database’ and choose what works best for you— or sign up for weekly or monthly DIY emails to help keep you in step with your goals and aligned with our recommendations. If you are more fluid and less structured in your Garden Planning, and wish to engage a more conversational-style, we’ll set your conversation in motion and email you recommendations, outline, or research as relevant. For most, if working with a solid landscape design is indicated, we have you covered and next steps can be proposed.

WHO A GARDEN PLAN BEST SERVES

Anyone wanting to talk with a professional about your garden idea or plan of action. This is an essential and clarifying first step for any project. Do you need curated DIY resources, just an idea or sketch for a Garden Plan, or a real clear Landscape Design? Do you have some key questions in order to get started? An initial consult is designed to help you check-in and learn what’s of most benefit to you, given the needs of your project. You’ll learn how the various planning tools can serve your process best and fit your budget. Our goal is for you to feel empowered in your planning and decision making process. Be able to ask the right questions, know what you need to take into account to achieve your vision, how to assess timeframes, who you can consider or compare for implementation, and other essential decision making tools that can cut out the stress and give you peace of mind. We know where you’re coming from. We’ve been helping clients with their projects since 2011. We’re happy to be able to meet you where you’re at and be your sherpa from the foothills to the peaks of landscaping on the front range.

GET STARTED TODAY!

DID YOU KNOW?

Biodiversity Is The Best Value

HOMEOWNERS We specialize in native landscape care and cultivation that increases the value of your property by increasing the health of the land and soil as well as the aesthetics. Ask us for details.

• Increase garden health with a balance in the biodiversity of your soil to create synergy with essential nutrients, minerals, microorganisms, humus, compost, mycorrhisa.

• Plant kinship species that help each other grow, such as vegetable, flower, or tree guilds, and attract pollinators.

• Build soil structure to increase root health, balance moisture, aeration, and create best conditions for your microclimate.

• Balance over-story (trees), under-story (shrubs), and ground cover for a healthier range of flora and more efficient use of space.

OUR VALUES

HUMANITY + ECOLOGY

TOGETHER WE THRIVE Humans, and all living things, are directly influenced by our natural environment. It’s a symbiotic relationship that we are each aware of to varying degrees. As with any area of specialization, we each perceive, value, and relate to different aspects of our environment uniquely. Yet we are all designed to thrive in relation to our environment, as an active part of the whole.

So why are we trained to think of nature as an inert backdrop to our lives, with quaint seasonal cycles that we reference only in relation to our schedules? Why do we think we are collectively separate from disasters happening around the globe?
Why do we feel compelled to try to dominate our environment in order to feel comfortable? This is true for us only to the extent that we haven’t yet learned to get our needs met autonomously while aligning with nature. Collectively, we’re like a clunky individuating teenager who thinks they know it all while straining the mother’s resources sometimes ungratefully or unaware. We simply haven’t been listening. We need good guidance. And we’re still growing. Thankfully, regardless of the extreme seemingly insurmountable disasters surrounding us, mother nature’s support is imminently achievable and infinitely changeable. We feel the positive affects when we are able to enjoy a hike or time in a healthy natural environment, and we feel the negative effects when we’re in a space that is out of balance. With this simple awareness, we can easily learn to cultivate and have a regenerative experience somewhere in our yard. It takes a little positive habit, like keeping our mental chatter positive or our room clean since we spend so much time there.

Nature speaks to us and through us from our environment every day. Start paying attention and asking how you can cultivate a mutually beneficial lifestyle as you walk out the door, and you’ll receive more value than you know what to do with. You don’t even need to become a hippy to live in regenerative splendor. But you do have to change some habits for the better, and enjoy thriving.

With simple cost effective biodiverse choices, our yard (just like us) can easily thrive. Our society may have kept us from growing into a more self-aware and grateful teenage species, but we’re waking up now. And Rebecca’s Gardens is here to help you thrive…

Here’s how to win-win in the landscape / gardening sandbox with a little new momentum. Spend time with those who have wisdom in balancing our natural environment, you’ll naturally find your own projects and passions uplifted. A good place to start is with a Consult. Sure you can receive the logistics you’re looking for and analyze them with your left brain. But you can also take the opportunity to engage your right brain creative and felt senses. This activates your instinct and intuition which often help you make decisions that are best for you and your environment. And you’ll have fun!

Another great opportunity to awaken a fresh perspective (and to begin to recognize greater benefits on all levels) is in the Design process. This is because it helps us focus on key elements that we are typically estranged from on a daily basis. Giving yourself time and fresh attention to these new areas can stimulate dormant neural-pathways to light up inviting us to come into greater coherence and efficiency with our surroundings, resulting in feelings of health and well being. It’s almost like we get to have a very personal relationship with elements of nature that make us feel good. Oh, yeah, that’s what we’re designed for in the first place. Humans and ecology are symbiotic, we’re reflections of what’s going on in the larger context, just at different levels. Humans are the noosphere (the mind) of the planet. We can stay busy and stay ignorant, we can blame, be victims, or try to tame our environment, or just as with any healthy relationship, the more we practice attention, balance, appreciation, curiosity, and learn ways to support, the more beauty, health, happiness, and yes wealth will be returned— by osmosis. And that benefits all areas of (your) life.

EVOLVING WITH YOUR DESIGN Rebecca’s Gardens draws you into balance in your next steps within your environment. Our study of ecology and social systems gives you fresh perspective. Our experience gives you solid options to achieve your goals. Our passion gives you inspiration. Our presence highlights new opportunities to help broaden your understanding of how both you and ecology can benefit.

Did You Know You Are A Living Breathing Co-Creating Part Of These Social Changes?

In the big picture, 2023 has become a tipping point in terms of the way things have been done or the way we as a community and as a society have been conditioned to believe they are done. It’s no surprise that the larger environment is seeing extremes and catastrophes that are also mirroring unparalleled human stress and division. And we are stepping up as best we can. You can read about how some are addressing the drought to the Colorado river basin from 2022.

Now closer to home, with respect to sub/urban landscaping, gardening, and especially in agriculture or wild land management, this year is the time to be willing to reeducate ourselves on exactly how we value what we have and how we can align with regenerative actions that truly make a difference within the natural systems and resources that sustain our health and pscho-social balance, as well as our land, and interconnected communities.

Rather than continuing to take for granted our property’s landscape as a passive backdrop to the market value of the house materials and neighborhood, we must outgrow that stagnant lesson with all its constipated results on our health, homeowner responsibilities, and mental stress. For a healthier happier life, we are now invited to truly begin to understand and to raise our valuation of both our property’s local natural resources, as well as how our property reflects being in balance with the larger ecological context in which it is situated. Learning how to upvalue our property to include nurturing land and water use changes the game. It refreshes our sense of connection to our land and strengthens our sense of community. This change of attitude puts us at the forefront of a beautiful new synergistic demonstration of green ecology and social standard that is in sync with nature’s healthy processes for our high alpine zone.

There are many ways to do this, and we are achieving this both as individuals and as groups in our neighborhoods. And we are partnering with like minded groups around the globe. As larger systems based on old thought begin to give way to new challenges and opportunities, we begin to realize the power of community creativity that is changing our world for the better — one project at a time.

How do such ecological values fit into the marketplace? They aren’t supposed to. Rather, with this change of attitude, we realize that we are actually responsible for fitting our socially-defined marketplace values to integrate and support nature’s local ecology. Creating a movement toward more balanced and multifaceted economics in the eyes of the market happens with a shift in homeowners and realtor’s (aka community) values, something that is happening in our community as we speak. Each one of us is poised to make that shift. And each year we are closer to the momentous tipping point for positive growth, around which movements really make a difference, with enough social momentum to become a new regenerative standard in support of values like the health of the soil, water and micro-climate management, native species, diversity, pollinators, personal use, personal health, beauty, and integration that defines ecology as part of the intrinsic value of our health and our community.

Achieving this isn’t as much an asterisk or a benefit accessible from the % return on our property assets as it is the new bottom line that gives back to us exponentially more than what we have invested, starting with our very survival, our personal and communal health, and our raison d’etre aka joy of living — and growing to include unique surpluses, abundance, and sharing that our communities are desperate for both emotionally and resourcefully. This mirrors the very definition of permaculture according to its founder Bill Mollison, which is that it is a conscious system between humans and nature’s patterns, a system that produces more energy and value than what it takes to create it. So this shift in perspective and valuation opens the door to considering new integrated approaches, ones that introduces greater alignment with our way of daily living, based on modern technologies that can operate in symbiosis with the organic systems of which we are a living part.

Rebecca’s Gardens is dedicated to helping you become more aware of your valuable and magical link with nature starting from the land on which you live, work, play, and grow. If your work places you in front of the computer for hours a day, it’s essential to reestablish your natural grounding, which will in turn help your health, state of mind, productivity and enjoyment of life. Through our designs, practices, education, collaboration, donation, and more, we are taking action this year to help uplift awareness in individuals and the social collective for an advanced cleaner happier more loving and interconnected green future. We hope you’ll join us!

HERB + VEGETABLE GARDEN DESIGN

ORGANIC | RAISED BEDS

• Design for Season + Taste

• Planting Schedule + Species Tips

• Irrigation Recommendation + Tips

• Raised Beds | Custom Planter Design

• Seeding | Companion Plants

• Soil Health | Cover Crops

• Harvesting and Composting

“When you work with Rebecca’s Gardens, you’re supporting your local ecology and community.”

Design Experience Tailored for the Front Range

Rebecca and her trusted team members have lived and worked in the Boulder area since 1999, and many are Colorado natives. Our collective decades of experience provide you with homegrown landscape and garden care specific to the Front Range. We know what works best, we can recommend local plant species, and are knowledgable as far as supporting unique solutions for your soil, plants, trees, irrigation, landscapes, with practical design options that feature the best of our high altitude ecology.

Rebalancing Ecology + Suburban Alpine Living

We use organic and permaculture principles in everything we design. We offer rEvolutionary™ design to take you from a nebulous desire to a clear design and scheduled plan of action. What’s more, each of our specialists and team members are professionally and philosophically aligned with nourishing our environment while providing you with top-notch native, suburban, and agricultural landscape solutions. We have experience you can rely on, go-to plants, materials, products, or people we can recommend, and win-win solutions that both respect and upgrade your property value and relationship to the landscape you call home.

Community Enrichment Through Local Investment

Our service and location provides natural community enrichment. By working with neighborhood clients and vendors, we exemplify a circular positive regenerative future of communities, ecologies, and economies. The principles we live by and demonstrate daily cultivate much-needed education, vision, service, and solution right here where we all call home. Our hearts, our values, our work and our dollars are invested locally. Healthy, trustable community connections and resources that you can grow with are good for us all.