What Design-Build Means for a Landscape in Rhode Island
Updated: 7 hours ago
One plan, one crew, one person to call. Why I draw the landscape and then build it.
Design-build is a phrase that gets used loosely, so let me say what it means here. I walk your property, I draw the plan, and then my crew and I build it, the pool, the walls, the terraces, the pergola and the garden, from the same set of drawings. There is no hand-off. The person who decided where the wall goes is the person standing on the site when the first stone is set, and if something needs to change, it changes that afternoon.
Why the drawing and the building belong together
A landscape plan is a set of promises about how things will fit: the pool coping to the terrace, the terrace to the steps, the steps to the grade, the grade to the plants. Every one of those joints is a place where a plan made in one office and built by another can go wrong. When the same hands draw and build, the joints get resolved on paper because I already know how they will be built, and the ones that surprise us in the ground get resolved by the person who understands why they were drawn that way. Building is how I learned to design.
From sketch to render to site
Every project here goes through the same three drawings. First a watercolor sketch, made quickly, so we can talk about the big moves before anyone falls in love with a detail. Then a 3D model of the whole property, rendered from the places you will actually stand: the kitchen window, the top of the steps, the end of the pool. Clients tell me the render is the moment the project becomes real to them. Then those same files become the drawings the crew builds from, so the wall in the render and the wall in the ground come from one idea.
What it looks like on site
A design-build project on this island usually runs in the order the land dictates. Water first: the pool, the drainage, the rain garden. Then stone: walls, steps, terraces, coping. Then wood: pergola, pavilion, gates, fence. Then earth: soil, trees, hedges, perennials, lawn. One crew moves through those phases in sequence, so the excavator that digs the pool is the one that shapes the grade for the walls, and the people who set the bluestone are the people who plant along it. Nothing waits on someone else's calendar, and nothing gets built to a drawing nobody on site has read.
The person who decided where the wall goes is the person standing on the site when the first stone is set.
What it means for you
You get one number, one schedule and one person responsible for the whole thing. When a question comes up, it is a phone call to me, not a meeting between a designer and a builder who have never met. Changes cost what they cost, not a redesign fee plus a change order. And the finished property holds together, because the pool, the stone, the wood and the garden were always one idea rather than four contracts.
Hardscape, pools and gardens, drawn as one
Most of what we do falls under hardscape: gunite pools and spas, fieldstone and bluestone walls, steps, terraces, drives. But I never draw the hardscape by itself. A terrace is designed with the hedge that will enclose it, a pool with the meadow that will sit beyond it, a wall with the catmint that will spill over it. That is the difference between a hardscape project and a landscape, and it only happens when the person drawing the stone is also thinking about the plants.
A little about our work
Our gardens have earned two Silver Awards from the Rhode Island Nursery and Landscape Association, and in 2026 the Preservation Society of Newport County recognized our rain garden at Marble House with its Laurel Award for Horticulture. You can read more about the studio.
Beginning your project
The best time to begin is the fall or winter before the season you want to enjoy your yard. We start with a walk of the property and a conversation about how you want to live outside, then a concept in 2D and 3D, then the phases, the permits and the build. You can read more about our four-element process and how to choose a landscape designer. We work across Aquidneck Island, Newport County, Little Compton and Southeastern Massachusetts. Call me at 401-619-1607 or request a consultation.
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