Landscape Design Services Des Plaines IL and northwest suburbs

Every project starts here. We meet at your property to walk through the space together, talk about what’s working and what’s not, and understand your goals. During this consultation, we assess soil conditions, drainage patterns, sun exposure, and existing plants. This isn’t a quick walk-through—we take time to understand your property’s challenges and opportunities before we start designing.

Whether you’re interested in perennial gardens that come back year after year, edible gardens for growing your own food, or rain gardens that manage stormwater naturally, we design gardens that fit local conditions. We focus on plant selection that works with clay soil and climate, arranging them in ways that look good from spring through fall while requiring reasonable maintenance.

Your patio should be more than just a basic surface underfoot. We design outdoor living spaces that extend your home’s footprint—places where you’ll actually want to spend time. This includes planning proper drainage underneath, selecting materials that handle freeze-thaw cycles, and positioning the space to take advantage of shade, views, and privacy.

Poor drainage is one of the most common landscape issues. We design grading plans that move water away from foundations, create rain gardens that capture runoff, and plan drainage systems when needed. Getting drainage right in the design phase prevents expensive fixes later.

Fire pits fail in predictable ways: smoke at the seating, footprint too close to the house, kit-style metal rings that warp by year three. Plans we draw avoid all three by checking the wind during the site walk, verifying clearances against the actual property survey, and specifying real stacked stone instead of catalog kits.

Most catalog pergola kits are sized for southern climates and crack in their first hard Chicago winter. We design pergolas with bigger beams, deeper footings, and rafter spacing tuned to local sun angles. The cedar costs slightly more up front, and the structure still looks intentional twenty years later.

A paver driveway built to spec is one of the highest-leverage hardscape investments on a Chicago lot. Concrete cracks within 12 years. Asphalt needs sealing every three. Pavers installed correctly outlast both, repair individually when something does shift, and read as a quality finish from the street rather than as deferred maintenance.

Native plant gardens use the Illinois prairie and woodland species that handle Chicago clay and Chicago winters without intervention. We design bed-by-bed against actual sun, soil, and drainage conditions, sequence species so the garden blooms April through October, and account for mature size on day-one spacing. Once established, the bed needs almost no irrigation, no fertilizer, and no annual replacement, while the deep root systems pull stormwater off the surface.