Landscape Design
Landscape design and design-build for Eastern Shore properties. Site-first plans built around Delmarva soil, salt exposure, deer pressure, and Critical Area rules. Easton, St. Michaels, Oxford, Cambridge, Chestertown. Marshall Property Management.
A plan that accounts for the site you actually have.
Most landscape plans fail here for the same reason. They are drawn from a plant palette that works somewhere else. The plan looks right on paper, the installation looks right the first spring, and then the salt spray burns the arborvitae, the sika deer strip the hostas, the water table drowns the roots of anything planted in the low corner, and three years later half of it has been replaced with whatever survived.
We design from the site first. What the soil is, where the water goes, how much salt comes off the water in a winter blow, how much sun a bed actually gets in August, and what the deer in your neighborhood have already shown you they will eat.
Walk the Property
Understand the Constraints
Draw the Plan
Price It Honestly
Install It
Stay With It
What makes a Delmarva plan different.
Salt. Waterfront and near-waterfront properties take salt off the Bay and the rivers, heaviest in winter storms when the plant is dormant and least able to recover. It burns evergreen foliage on the windward side first. Plant selection on an exposed lot is a shorter list than most catalogs suggest, and the difference between a plan that knows that list and one that does not shows up in the second winter.
Water table. Much of the Shore is flat with a high seasonal water table, and some of it is muck or peat near tidal areas. A plant rated for average moisture will sit in saturated soil for weeks in a wet spring. Bed grading and species choice have to account for where the water actually stands, which is rarely where the topography suggests.
Sika deer. Sika are smaller than whitetail, common through Dorchester and the lower Shore, and they browse differently. Plant lists written for mainland deer pressure do not map cleanly onto properties where sika are the problem.
Soil. River neck clay, sandy ground closer to the water, and low organic matter across most of it. The same plant in the same design behaves differently a mile apart. This is why the soil gets looked at before the plant list gets written.
Critical Area. Within 1,000 feet of tidal water, Maryland regulates clearing, impervious surface, and buffer plantings. Some of what a plan can do near the water is set by rule, not by preference.
Design, or design and build.
Some clients want a plan they can hold, price out, and act on over a few seasons. Others want one company to draw it and install it. We do both, and the design work stands on its own if you want to take it elsewhere.
The reason to do both under one company is accountability. When the same company draws the bed and plants it, there is no argument about whether the plan was wrong or the installation was. That matters most on the parts that are expensive to redo: grading, drainage, hardscape locations, and any tree going in a spot it will occupy for thirty years.
Related work often designed alongside a planting plan: hardscaping for patios, walls, and walkways, tree and shrub planting for the installation itself, and lawn and turf installation where the turf areas are being rebuilt at the same time.
Full Property Plans
Exposed Sites
Period Properties
Common Areas
What a design costs.
Design is priced by the scope of the property and the depth of the plan. A foundation bed refresh and a full waterfront property plan are not the same piece of work. We tell you the design fee before we start, and on projects we install, that fee is credited toward the installation.
The site walk and the first conversation are free. If it turns out you need a plan smaller than the one you came in asking for, we will say so.
See also: Landscaping · Tree & Shrub Planting · Hardscaping · Lawn & Turf Installation · Year-Round Maintenance Plans