"In 1995 when I first started working on this yard, it was basically a swamp with dense trees growing straight up because they had nowhere to go."
Caroline Beane of Landscape Designs, Inc. has seen landscaping needs for this acre on Bishop Lane in Alexandria change with the addition to the house, the need for more entertainment space and an expanded patio and the addition barrier protection to alleviate noise created by the high school in back.
Janice Curtin adds, "we need to keep our two grandchildren happy. I'm putting a swing set over there on the side."
"We did this in stages, starting with drainage,” said Janice Curtin, owner of the property with her husband David. “See that fake creek with a bridge going over it and a hidden sump pump?" She vividly remembers the next step when Beane strategically chose the trees to be taken out and marked them in white.
"Then I hired some tree guys to come and take them down," Curtin says. "The first truck got stuck, then the next truck got stuck and when they finally took down the trees one of them fell over a power line and took out the electricity in the whole neighborhood."
Beane says when she starts a job she has a free consultation with the client where they tell her what they are interested in. She looks at the space. "I ask a number of questions like are there children that need a play space? Do they have animals that might eat poisonous plants? What is their idea about use of pesticides? How much do they entertain and for what size groups?”
Also it is important to know if they are planning to stay in the house for a while or are fixing it up to sell. "Things like hot tubs and swimming pools take a lot of maintenance and don't bring back your return." Then she walks the yard, does the measurements, draws up a plan and discusses it with them. She and Janet Gaskins, who started Landscape Designs 27 years ago, personally oversee the design, installation and maintenance projects.
She says when she is designing the area she considers balance of scale of the house to the yard, orientation of the house-do you need shade?
"Like in this yard you need big plants for scale." Sometimes a client just has to have something that is not likely to grow well in their soil and sun conditions. "I always advise them, but I do what they want." She adds there is a lot of marine clay in this area and it expands when wet and contracts when dry so it can shift your foundation. It makes a difference,in what you can do."
Today Beane is doing cleanup and Janice says, "my driveway needs attention because it is green with grass growing through the stones. Beane tells her foreman Eric Martin to take off the bluestone on the driveway and it will be reused in the backyard. He will install filter fabric to keep the grass from growing back and put in smaller pieces of bluestone. "This job will take two days; sometimes they take two weeks."
Beane says they do mostly residential properties, especially in the Alexandria and Arlington areas but sometimes they do some commercial maintenance.
Beane started at the University of Maryland Extension Service as the first female horticultural agent in the State of Maryland. Then on to another residential garden center, owned her own nursery for a while and was chair of the Horticultural Department at then Charles County Community College. But this all started as a little kid when her mother encouraged her to work in the yard. "My mother was a pointer — put that over there; I did it all."
In high school she worked at a local nursery and when she decided to attend college, her grandmother was very proud until she found out "I planned to major in horticulture. She was very upset, said it wasn't ladylike. Women could be a teacher, nurse or missionary."
Beane commented that today, people are looking for outdoor kitchens and fireplaces as well as water features that "hardly anyone was doing 10 years ago." She adds that a lot of people don't have big yards so they are trying to use space in the most efficient way. It is an expansion of the house. They are also asking for no maintenance yards.
"Years ago people were interested in gardening, but today they have no time."
She says if you are trying to sell, good landscaping is important to add to a home's curb appeal. "If the outside is cool, people will think the inside is cool, too, so it sets them off in a good pattern and absolutely helps sell the house.”