Serge van der Voo Landscapes

Every project has the potential to be a truly unique and personal space. With the distinct seasonal changes of the Midwest, a garden can take on year-round dimension. Focusing on a master plan approach, we fully integrate your opportunities, needs, and goals with the future development and growth of your particular project. Our primary goal is to help you understand your options and ultimately achieve your site’s full potential. Past projects have varied in size and location from several hundred square feet to large tracts of land in urban, suburban, and rural settings. These spaces typically contain a diversity of materials and designed features, such as walkways, driveways, patios, walls and fences, sculpture, water features, lighting, irrigation, and a variety of deciduous, evergreen, and perennial planting materials.  These elements interact within a composition that physically connects our needs to the surrounding environment. Regardless of style, taste, or even plant choices, well-placed design elements create the beginnings of cohesive garden spaces. Scale, texture, material, color, form, softness or hardness, are just a few of the choices that can be applied to an existing property, its architecture, and its surrounding context. Below are some key elements that help connect indoor spaces with outdoor spaces:

• Visual Entry – Marking a clear entry that fits the scale and character of the house. Usually a paver or stone walk invites one up the front door, in other instances an upright tree or shrub can visually frame the front stoop area.
• Circulation – Opening up a property, connecting spaces we pass through allows us to experience every step we take. A planted pathway between buildings can visually make a space seem wider and slow us down as we take in the garden space.
• Destinations – Open spaces surrounded by plant masses and foliage. Whether these spaces consist of stone, brick, or open lawn panels they can become an outdoor room with a backdrop of seasonal planting variety.
• Focal Points – Sight, sound, and movement set within a larger setting. Fountains, boulders, planting urns, stone seating walls, arbors/pergolas, bird houses/baths, or certain ornamental and espaliered plants will easily stand out among the edges and perimeters of a garden space.
• Uniformity and Flow – The curvilinear bedlines that contain planting beds introduces form throughout the entire space. This line creates contrast and marks the beginning of a series of plant forms and textures. Within the plant beds a cohesive “layered” effect is created using evergreen groundcovers, perennials (seasonal flowers and grasses), and a mix of evergreen and deciduous shrubs and trees.