We consulted with Laura after we bought a house this summer to help get overall planning advice and she was amazing. Super responsive to our outreach and she gave really useful and direct guidance and recommendations for specific services we may want to consider. Exactly what we needed as we were thinking long term / big picture for our new forever home. Will gladly be working with her in the future once we are ready for big landscape projects! read more

A family dream! Laura helped us complete our dream of having a functional, fun, gorgeous backyard! She did a great job working with our vision and shaping the yard into a useful space for all ages to enjoy. She even connected us with an amazing contractor who helped us fulfill our vision. I would highly recommend Laura's services. She helps guide you through the journey. She understands the landscape and weather. She helps pick the plants and installs them and even gives guidance on how to care for your new yard. We could not be happier!! read more

Secret Garden Landscapes - Frontyard renovation - Landscape Architects or Designers Near Me

Secret Garden Landscapes just transformed our front yard beautifully! Laura is detail-oriented, budget-conscience, and very knowledgeable about the plants native to this area. I highly recommend her services. read more

Laura at Secret Garden Landscapes is an absolute delight to work with, very talented with design, and extremely knowledgable about climate appropriate plants for our area. With the drought, we decided to stop using the sprinklers in our backyard two years ago. We wanted to replace the lawn and create an outdoor living area in the back that would feel like an extension of our home. We also wanted drought resistant plants and a more water efficient watering system. The problem was, we had no idea where to start. Thankfully, we decided to call Secret Garden Landscapes. When Laura came over for the first consult, she could envision immediately where the hardscape area should be and where we could maintain an area of grass in the side yard in a much more water efficient way. We were so impressed with the detail in Laura's final design plan. We also very much appreciated the binder she created for us that outlines details about how to care for the plants in our design. Our backyard was completed a few weeks ago, and we are enjoying it every day. We now have a large paver patio, a moss rock wall lining our back fence, and beautiful plants and trees surrounding our space. We have so much more usable space for the kids to run around, and to entertain. As we look around at the plants, we can already see them thriving with the new drip system. We would never have been able to come up with this design without Laura, and we are so thankful we found her!! read more

So so thankful to have found Laura! We cannot recommend her highly enough. She created a custom design for our home, which included a front, side and backyard. She likes to do a walk through of your house to get a sense of your design aesthetic. She also likes to take pictures out of your windows so she can understand what you will see from inside the house. She will also ask questions around how you intend to use the space. (She even asked our kids!). She was great and incredibly thoughtful. In passing we told her that we had just moved here from Italy ... and happened to mention that we didn't like fruit trees because we didn't want to have to clean up after them. She connected the dots and surprised us by putting in Fruitless Olive trees in the plans for our yard to remind us of our time there. One of many places where she went above and beyond with her thoughtfulness. She responded to all of our feedback and her end product was fantastic! read more

We had an incredible experience working with Laura at Secret Garden! In our first meeting, we discussed what we envisioned for our yard, and I provided pictures of things I liked from various other yards. In our 2nd meeting, Laura came with a binder full of pictures and CAD designs of what our yard could look like, and it was everything we had been wanting and had been imagining. She also did some preliminary pricing based off the design so we had some sense of what the cost would be before we started bidding out the project. Her pricing for her design time and knowledge of the plants we needed was very reasonable and less than what we'd been told to expect from other landscape designers. When it came time to bid the project to a landscape contractor, she provided us with soft copies of the design so we could easily share it, and she also gave us a recommendation for a landscape contractor. We met with her recommendation first, and immediately felt at ease and comfortable that he knew what we wanted. His company was Quality Garden Landscaping, and he was also incredible to work with! He was super fast, flexible, conscientious, and came in on budget in LESS time than we were anticipating. The whole experience with Laura and her team was amazing from start to finish, and we are so thrilled with the end product! We cannot recommend her enough! read more

My backyard is amazing and it is endlessly fascinating to me! One of the best early decisions I made was calling Laura. She measured, took pictures, studied the sun and shade patterns and came up with a great design for my backyard. It has more hardscape, lots of seating in various locations, raised beds, and interesting and colorful plantings. As I told her, it is like a nature preserve... butterflies, birds, and bees all know there is a new, pretty garden in town. I highly recommend Laura to make a ho-hum backyard come alive to a truly functional space! read more

We converted our front yard to a drought tolerant greenscape. Laura provided alternatives: design ideas and various plants that thrive in our area with relatively little maintenance. It was a pleasure to work with her, and we are excited with the result! Her plantings all look very healthy, and I can't wait to see them mature. Laura has an excellent design sense and great local experience that extends to the installation process. Her advice is invaluable! read more

Laura created a custom design for my backyard recently and I couldn't be happier. Her price fell within range of other designers. She came up with multiple concepts after interviewing me about what I envisioned for my yard. Her turnaround time was quick and she had no problems editing based on feedback I provided. Her ideas were creative and the final product she provided was clear and easy to follow. read more

Secret Garden Landscapes is HIGHLY recommended. Our situation was that we installed a large lawn without thinking about complementary trees, shrubs or other plants. Laura came up with a plan that took into consideration our soil and our weather. She worked with us to create a list of plants, shrubs and trees that we can plant over time and as our budget allows. The list and plan had several options that we could choose from, has the flower and foliage color schemes that we wanted while also being mostly drought tolerant. Laura was very thorough, punctual and took care to listen and understand our specific landscaping needs. We look forward to having her help us with other areas of our property in the future! read more

Secret Garden Landscapes turned our backyard into a space we love to use! Now, our terraced garden has a beautiful seating area amongst a thoughtful variety of drought resistant and local plants. Laura's vision, knowledge, and passion for the craft showed through from beginning to end. In addition, Laura finished our project in a very timely manner. We highly recommend Secret Garden Landscapes for any and all services. read more

Laura did an excellent job on our landscape project. She took our front yard, which was mostly dead grass and looked outdated, and totally revamped it for us. Laura has a very thorough and thoughtful process. From the beginning she comes up with several 'vision' options and talks through each one. We were not super knowledgeable about plants and she explained the pros and cons of each type. She took our feedback and revised the design. The contractor that did the demo and new irrigation and planting were also great and easy to work with. We wanted something low maintenance but drought tolerant and it turned out beautiful. We are really happy with how everything turned out and we get so many compliments on our new yard. Thanks Laura! read more

We have a big landscaping project for our Moraga home. After talking with two other designers first, we signed up with Laura at our first meeting with her, because she is pleasant, knowledgeable, reasonably priced, and she listens to what we want for our garden. After four or five meetings and changes of ideas, we have our final design today, and we are very pleased with the landscaping design and the care instructions she's provide. Highly recommending this company! read more

Secret garden landscape designed and organized the install of our front yard. Laura's expertise of California landscape and drought tolerant plants is exactly what we needed (since i have zero experience)! Within 6 months, the plants have thrived and have totally transformed our yard. I look forward to working with Laura again on our backyard!! read more

Laura did a great job designing our garden to stay within our budget, and she connected us with an awesome landscape contractor to complete the job as well. She provided us with a lot of great mock-ups of how the landscaping would look in different seasons and provided information about how to care for the plants after installation. We will definitely use her for future projects! I highly recommend her. read more

We live in Moraga. We wanted to eliminate about 50 percent of our lawn, and completely redo our landscape. Laura helped us visualize several options that would require less water, while increasing the overall beauty of our front and backyard. We especially liked how she incorporated hardscape with drought tolerant plants and moss rocks (and boulders) that completely transformed our outdoor space. She was very patient in working with us and helping us achieve all our goals. We wish we had done this years ago! Laura's really good at what she does, and she's very reasonable in what she charges. We would highly recommend her. Tim M. read more

Laura is fantastic to work with. She was very attentive to our requests, worked very hard to provide a number of options, and is a great counselor in resolving differences of design preference in creative ways. We love our new back yard - it's unique, modern, and comfortable. One of the things we love about Laura's service is the monthly "to-do" that she provides - as someone with a black thumb and zero knowledge on how to take care of plants, this is critical in keeping our back yard alive and beautiful. Laura is easy to work with, responsive, and creative. When we get around to designing our front yard, she'll be our first phone call! read more

Laura came to our rescue! We needed her input urgently and she made room for us in her schedule within the week. She was easy to work with and offered several different service levels to fit our budget. She asked questions like "what do you use this area for" and prioritized the many projects we had ahead. She factored in things like our water bill and irrigation issues without suggesting costly overhaul. We received an amazing photographic illustration of what our property would look like when her design was implemented. I would highly recommend Laura and Secret Garden Landscapes! read more