Roses and an Outdoor Office

Designed for a student competition in which no one ever found out who won, this drawing was for a genuine site and a real client. It was the first design I ever did, having just decided to try out this landscape design thing. The client’s favorite landscape-related word was “lush,” his wife’s favorite plants were roses, and he loved his lawn and having a tall plant border to hide from the two-story neighbors. He had drainage issues as the entire backyard sloped toward his house and flooded the patio on the left, which was also his outdoor office. He got roasted out of the “office” with the early afternoon sun and wished he could stay out there longer.

The drainage issue was solved by breaking up his old concrete patio. The concrete was replaced with flagstones and kept level as it was expanded about three feet deeper into his yard. A low sitting wall raised a flower bed into easy reach for maintenance, created a proper “room,” and also hid drainage tubing underneath the new roses. 

Privacy and shade were created by adding pergolas to the “office” area and to the right side where the master bedroom had a door to the backyard, as well as to an upper section of the property where the clients had recently lost a mature tree and the sense of seclusion and shade it created. The upper left end of the property was an unfettered view of the valley below and all plants needed to be kept under five feet tall excepting an existing lemon tree.

The original fully colored and annotated drawing was turned in and the scan is quite sub-par, but this hand-rendered black-and-white drawing still shows the care taken in inking and line work.

Hand-rendered, student work