First terrace: design, grade and privacy planting
Landscaping Design, Installation & Privacy Planting
A full landscape design and installation practice for Nashville, Brentwood and Franklin backyards: the drawing, the drainage and the grade, then the planting, chosen and placed on purpose.
Chapter 01
The consultation is a listening exercise, not a pitch
Before anything is drawn, George Allin wants to hear how you actually want to use the yard. The company's own words for it, given to every client who asks how to prepare for the first meeting: our approach is to listen attentively to your needs rather than promoting a predetermined plan. Bring photos you like, a rough budget range, and the parts of the current yard that already work.
That first conversation becomes a landscape design, which is really a set of decisions about how the property should read from the house, from the street, and from wherever you'll actually be standing. Landscape renovations start the same way, whether the job is a full tear-out or a reworking of beds that have gone tired around a house that hasn't changed.
A columnar hedge and specimen planting design detail at a Nashville-area home
The grade and the water move first
Nothing goes in the ground until the grade is right and the water has somewhere to go. Drainage solutions come before planting, not after, because a bed that sits in standing water after every Tennessee thunderstorm was never going to hold what you planted in it. Landscape installation follows the corrected grade, not the other way around.
This is also where garden bed design gets decided, since a bed's shape and depth only make sense once the water is already moving off the lawn correctly. Property enhancements, whether that's a new bed line along a walkway or reshaping a slope that never drained right, all sit on the same corrected grade.
Chapter 03
Privacy planting, named by species
A privacy screen is a plant choice, not a fence. Allin Landscaping plants Emerald Green and Green Giant Arborvitae, Skip Laurel, Taylor Juniper, Nellie Stevens Holly, Brodie Eastern Red Cedar and Columnar Hornbeam, each one picked for how it grows, how wide it wants to spread, and how it holds up through a Tennessee winter.
Evergreen screens built from the right species do the job for good, filling in year over year instead of needing to be patched or replaced. Choosing the wrong plant for the site is the single most common reason a privacy line fails within a few seasons, which is why the species is the part of the job that actually gets talked through at the consultation.
Foundation plantings, color through the seasons, light at night
Foundation plantings anchor the house to the ground it sits on, and seasonal color programs keep the beds from going flat between spring and fall. Both get planned together, so the color rotation doesn't fight with what's already established along the foundation line.
Landscape lighting planning finishes the picture: where fixtures sit, what gets lit and what stays in shadow, and how the planting reads once the sun is down. It's planned alongside the beds rather than bolted on afterward, which is the difference between a yard that looks designed at night and one that just has a few spotlights aimed at it.
"Landscaping, hardscape, lighting, gas firepit. Beautiful finished back yard, just as planned. He created a good design drawing, and a detailed itemized cost estimate so it was clear what the scope included. Final cost and end product were exactly as quoted." David Sanford, Nashville