Every project has rooms.
Now your plant list does too.
You already think about the property in sections – the front entry, the meditation garden, the pool area.
Areas bring that same thinking into your project.
Create a space for each Area of the property, name it whatever makes sense, and start grouping plants into it.
You define the Areas. You work through your plants and roughly assign them.
And when you’re ready – presentations, reports, and schedules are already organized the same way.
This is also where you refine your plant list.
You’ll probably add a lot of plants to your projects – candidates you like, options you want to try, ideas you want to hold onto.
Areas gives you a way to work through all of them. As you define the spaces in the overall design, you’ll start roughly assigning plants to each space.
Some Areas start taking shape quickly. Others make it clear you’re missing something – more height, more winter interest, another evergreen to anchor the corner.
Name them anything.
Create as many as you need.
There’s no template to follow. A welcome garden, the kinship garden, the water garden – those are your Areas.
Name them anything what you want.
You can also rename the term “Areas” itself. If “Areas” doesn’t fit how you work or how you talk to your clients, change it.
Call them “Rooms”. Call them “Collections”. The label updates everywhere – in your project, in your presentations, in your reports. Change it from project to project as you need.
Each Area becomes a filter.
Once you’ve organized plants into Areas, you can use those Areas to review your work. Select an Area, layer in a plant characteristic – bloom time, size, foliage color – and see exactly what you’ve got in that space.
Pull up everything in the meditation garden and layer in bloom time – you’ll see exactly what’s happening in fall.
Does the front yard have four seasons of interest?
Are the grasses you introduced near the pool carrying through the spaces beyond it?
Run it in the other direction, too. Start with a plant characteristic – every evergreen in the project, say – and add an Area to see where they’re being used. Use the filters to ensure you’re using evergreens in the right Areas.
Two directions for the same Area?
Build both.
Say you’re working on the meditation garden and you’ve got two strong ideas.
A moon garden with white flowers, soft green and silver foliage.
Or a more vibrant option with more pinks, oranges, and purple color.
Build an Area for each. Pitch them side by side. When the client decides, hide the other one.
You didn’t delete anything – it’s still there when you need it.
The same logic applies to phases. Map out the entire property, then hide the Areas that aren’t part of phase one.
When the client is ready to continue, everything is already there.
Walk your client through the plants the way they’ll move through the landscape.
Every Area can be shown or hidden in anything you send – presentations, reports, schedules.
Pitching phase one, hide phase two. Leading with the moon garden, hide the meadow version.
Walk them through the design the way they’ll move through the landscape – one Area at a time.
That’s a different conversation than handing someone a PDF with 50 plants on it.
Ready to start organizing your plants?
“I wish I could remember the exact words, but my clients called me last week after I sent a presentation that broke all the plants down into Areas and they just loved it.
It helped them really visualize the plants I had chosen.
They were excited to see the different blooms, the leaf colors and textures, they could see even with plants not in bloom that there is lots of interest to enjoy.”
Connie Lefkowitz | CL Gardens