What does a multi-year landscaping project look like?

At Victoria Gardens, we often work with clients for decades, doing the maintenance on a garden after the design and installation phase. But we also have clients who continue to develop and finetune their properties: adding pools, adding gardens, extending gardens, etc.

Your dream garden may not come into being overnight. You may not know exactly what you want all at once or budget restrictions may mean you need to break up a big dream into multiple phases.

We wanted to walk through what one of those muti-phase projects looks like.

Watch the video to see the “final” project. Scroll down to read about the five year process.

This property belongs to long-time clients and friends, Erica and Tim in Accord, NY. They purchased the renovated farmhouse and we came in for a consultation in 2017.

Every client gets a file in the Victoria Gardens office, so Victoria flipped back through two (very thick) folders holding the notes and history of the entire project. Here’s how the project happened over time:

The very first project was a planting along the deck, but as the property evolved we removed the garden to add steps along the deck.

The pool was installed in 2018 and that year we designed the fence. The pool fence was the most difficult to design, because you want a fenced-in area as generous as you can afford. But large fenced-in areas are expensive. Our solution was to use two different types of fencing. One a more solid type of design and one that could “disappear.” We designed the pool fence to go into the meadow and then the woods, expanding the space even more visually, so you don’t feel like you’re in a playpen.

In the next phase, we planted inside the pool area, then we enhanced the meadow by planting sturdy perennials into the meadow grasses that were already there.

And finally, Tim very successfully seeded wildflowers over the septic tank of the brand new pool house (brown building).

We were very careful about only planting deer-resistant plants outside of the pool area, but we splurged on some non-deer-resistant specimens inside the fenced-in area.

This project has always been very collaborative. Erica wanted to stick to a limited pallet for flowers and foliage, which makes the look and feel consistent through the different outdoor spaces.

And even though the pallet was limited, Erica and Tim were not rigid about the structure of the garden. We chose many plants that naturalize and self-seed so the plantings have a whimsical, natural feel to them. The effect is that the garden looks like it has been there for 25 years, not 5.

The walkway from the house to the pool house is pea gravel for affordability, easy maintenance, and the crunching sound of walking from one space to the other adds to the experience.

Tim built the unique fire pit and we love it! It is a special feature that adds to the overall design and aesthetic of the whole property.

Take a tour of the “finished” (for now) property: