COVERSTORY


designs in a neighborhood begin to look identical, walkways can be the element that makes a home unique. Of course, she says, this is no small feat. After all, how many different ways can you really walk from the driveway to the front door? More than you may realize when you start to think out of the box, she says. “Walkways must first and foremost be functional,” she says. “Walkways ulti- mately come down to serving a purpose of taking someone from point A to point B. But we must think about how we can make it feel like something different and unique about this house? Is it a landing area with a bench? Is it a pattern on the border? There are more design ideas beyond just a simple path that can make curb appeal unique and help the client to take pride in their property.”


for top-tier landscaping companies — and justification for clients to pay more for their work.


“Clients are spending a lot with us, so they certainly don’t want the same patio or walkway design that their neighbor has,” she adds. “It comes down to how we differentiate ourselves as designers so that it is truly original every single time.” When it comes to ensuring originality on every project, Nick Onesto, landscape designer with Goldberg and Rodler, Inc., in Huntington, New York, says that each project must truly start from scratch — with an entirely fresh perspective. “In looking at this from the design perspective, we are taking a holistic ap- proach to every single project that we do,” he says. “In design, I am influenced by site conditions and by the client’s goals — and how we can use all the tools in our designer toolbox to create something entirely unique and true to the site.”


BEYOND THE PATIO


Photo: (Top) Mariani Landscape (Bottom) R&R Landscaping


really cool with the patio,” Woleben-Me- ade explains. “A lot of it is thinking about where to spend on custom details. If I can figure out a less expensive way to build a step, then maybe I can do a really cool granite border around the patio. It becomes a matter of prioritizing where those custom details matter most.” Woleben-Meade says that in many ways, creativity becomes a differentiator


24 The Landscape Professional //May/June 2021


It’s so easy to think of hardscaping in terms of patios, and that usually is the showpiece of many outdoor living projects. But hardscaped projects may also include walkways, retaining walls, and fire features like fire pits and outdoor fireplaces. Even the selection of boulders or rock used as decorative accents are opportunities for creativity. Woleben-Meade says that walkways are an important hardscaping element as they are what add curb appeal to the front of a home. When all residential


MATERIALS MATTER There’s no question that the chosen materials also contribute to a project’s creativity.


Rossen says that they’re “thinking out


of the box” by not limiting their selection to only what’s available locally. “I’ll fly to Tennessee to the mountains so that I can hand-select the boulders and a lot of the stone we’re using in these projects — and then have them shipped back to us,” Rossen says. Woleben-Meade says that one of the first steps to creative design is not feeling “tied to what you have in inventory or what’s in your yard.” “We try to think outside of the box as


much as we can with material,” she says. “Of course, here in Illinois where we have some intense freeze/thaw cycles, we are limited by the climate. We have bluestone and limestone that both work really well — but how can we use them differently in order to be creative? We do a lot with patterns and finishes and layout. For in- stance, I might do a border with a slightly different finish — and then change the pattern on the interior. I have used bluestone on an edge in thin pieces for a herringbone pattern. It doesn’t always have to be the whole patio. A typical patio with a unique patterned border can be just the spark that project needs to be entirely unique.”


Goldman says that materials can absolutely play a role in creativity. One of her favorite spaces is a recycled concrete patio.


“It’s almost more satisfying to repur- pose an old material in a new way than it is to find a new material that we love,”


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