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design process

At Carolina Landscape, it is our privilege to share in your vision for creating your ideal outdoor space.

From downtown gardens to sprawling low country estates, our talented designers will take you through our iterative design process to develop a plan that aligns with your style, property, and sense of place. We work with the creative and technical aspects of your site, generating a comprehensive master plan which is both buildable and submittable to the various review boards, HOA’s, and approval boards. We are comfortable with navigating the Charleston specific opportunities and constraints, such as drainage.
We enjoy the opportunity to work with rain gardens, native plants, and pollinator gardens, we have both formal schooling and in the field experience designing and installing these gardens here in Charleston and the low country.

We welcome the opportunity to work with you and your family in discovering your new landscape!

carolina landscape design process

Free Consultation:
Meet with one of our talented landscape designers for a one-on-one meeting to discuss your lifestyle, project goals, and project budget. We will generate a flat rate written design proposal for your review and approval.

Site Inventory & Analysis:
An important step in moving forward is understanding where we are at. Members of our design team come to your site to gather pertinent information to create a computer-aided design (CAD) ‘base map’ of your site.

  • Site inventory includes documenting the physical aspects of your site and surround: house placement on the site, existing vegetation, hardscapes, fencing, drainage structures, etc.
  • Site analysis looks at how these physical features may affect the site: sun/shade, wind patterns, screening/or viewport opportunities, drainage patterns, circulation through the site, etc.
  • A current plat or site survey is helpful for us to understand the invisible influences on your site: easements, property lines, ROW, setbacks, OCRM buffers, etc.

Conceptual Design
Using the base map, our team members generate a colorful, hand-rendered drawing(s) to share their design ideas with you. These drawings are meant to illustrate the overall function and layout of the site. You will also be presented with an inspiration booklet containing relevant photos to the design as well as a pictorial plant booklet.

Design Development
Inspired by your feedback from the conceptual design, our team members turn the hand-rendered drawing into a CAD master plan and comprehensive packet. With plenty of opportunity for feedback and tweaking, this step in the process is detailed focus to turn your design into reality. Deliverables generally include master plan, landscape plan, hardscape plan, lighting plan, drainage plan, mitigation plan, and construction details. This packet ultimately can be used for any necessary submittals as well technical direction for the project installation.

Estimated Proposal:
Along with the detailed comprehensive packet, our team will generate a rough ballpark estimate for the project designed. This serves as a talking point of how we wish to proceed for installation: should the proposal be fine-tuned, or do we need to consider phasing? This also concludes our design process, and we look forward to discussing submittals & installation.

Submittals:
For an hourly rate, we will submit the previously generated documents to your respected HOA and township boards. The hourly rate is also applied to make any changes per feedback from said board.

Installation:
With an approved installation proposal, you will be placed in our queue. Queue times can vary throughout the year.