Recommended Landscape Designers in LA? Good Questions

Q- My husband and I are about to move to our new home, and our first project is going to be a major backyard renovation. We hope to turn a boring expanse sod into a beautiful outdoor room where we can spend lots of our time. We have lots of ideas (drought-tolerant, sculptural plants, a vegetable and herb garden, a BBQ and dining area) but we want to get a professional involved to collaborate with us to design it. It would be so helpful if Apartment Therapy (and AT readers) could help us compile a list of recommended landscape designers in the LA area. Thanks in advance! Anna

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Comments (14)

www.bowmanlandscapedesign.com

The Venice outpost of Big Red Sum sounds like a good fit based upon your criteria.

www.lushlifela.com

We're a small landscape and architecture firm in LA, and have done many outdoor rooms in LA, Santa Monica and the Hollywood Hills.

We had a great experience working with Andrew at Beauty Grows
http://www.beautygrows.com/

They are neighbors of ours and we were thrilled not only with their work but with their willingness to work with a very, very tight budget. They solved a major drainage problem, tiered the yard and installed a small retaining wall, installed an irrigation system, layed sod, built a fire pit and helped us select low water plants (which we planted ourself to save $) all for the same price another contracter wanted just for the drainage!

I'll come back tonight and post a link to some before and after pictures our yard.

Alexandra Tasker Marx, Landscape Architect

I would love to design the garden of your dreams! I am a licensed Landscape Architect, with a Masters degree from Harvard Univ. Design School and fourteen years experience designing and overseeing construction of outdoor spaces throughout Southern California.

I just started a website (which is still quite sparse): http://alexandramarx.blogspot.com/
and would be happy to show you images of previous projects in person.

I can also provide references. I look forward to talking with you.

Thanks for all the recs - I look forward into delving into them and learning more. It's exciting that there is so much great talent out there!

A few that I had identified previously were Elysian Landscapes (www.elysianlandscapes.com), Dry Design (www.drydesign.com), Orange Street Studio (www.orangestreetstudio.com), and ARTECHO (www.artecho.com). If anybody knows anything about any of these, especially Pamela Palmer of ARTECHO, I'd love to hear it!

Gregory, i really wish you'd tell where you got your images from - you've had several posts now that i've wanted to see the source!

I just came across this info -- wondering who you ended up using and if you were happy? We're just starting to do research on updating/renovating our small backyard in LA. I checked out the websites mentioned in the post by Emily the Cat and thought all 4 were great! Would love to hear how your yard turned out!

Just found this thread myself. You can check out a lot of great designers at www.houzz.com, which is kind of like a Facebook for design professionals. We used it and found Lenkin Design, who did an amazing job for us. Their website is www.lenkindesign.com