Blue Hibiscus Gardens

Blue Hibiscus Gardens is a landscape design firm which serves residential sites . Services include garden and hardscape design, planting design, container planning, and horticultural consulting. Blue Hibiscus Gardens does not provide installation services, but can introduce you to licensed landscape contractors who do installations. The service area is focused on SF Peninsula and SF South Bay counties.

Blue Hibiscus Gardens specializes in two aspects of the landscape design business that sets it apart from others: - Formally trained horticulturalist who can determine the right plant for each space you have - Advanced technical skills for computer design and visualization so that you can imagine what your garden will look like. Blue Hibiscus Gardens prides itself in its ethical, professional, efficient and transparent service and design. The goal is to provide you with sustainable and ecologically responsible design while at the same time giving you a beautiful and usable space.

A landscape designer generates a plan that can be used by landscape contractors to build your dream project. Blue Hibiscus Gardens can generate 2D and 3D plans for visualization, communication and documentation, illustrating the placement of hardscape elements and plants as well as indentifying the size and number of plants and recommended type of irrigation. This plan is done with micro climates, sun exposure, water conservation in mind. During the installation phase, Blue Hibiscus Gardens can be present on site to help with plant health decisions, plant removal, placement and hardscape adjustments. The contractor is responsible for building and planting according to industry standards. The designer and the contractor work for the home owner individually on separate contracts.

Blue Hibiscus Gardens is a professionally trained designer with a degree in Environmental Design and Horticulture. It is not a landscape architecture firm. A licensed landscape architect can additionally do commercial designs where a landscape designer in California only does residential designs. A licensed architect can provide construction documents and drainage and grading plans. A landscape designer relies on his or her licensed contractor contacts to complete the installations according to the state regulations for construction.

Motto of Blue Hibiscus Gardens is: "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail." It is always best to have the full plan in hand even if you decide to do the installation in phases. This ensures that costly mistakes are avoided such as putting hardscape down and later realizing that you missed putting conduits under it for irrigation and low-voltage lighting in a far corner that is now unreachable.

The cost and length of the design process are dependent on the scope of project. It is fair to say nothing can be achieved for a full yard plan that is bid-worthy for less than several thousand dollars. If you prefer to be budget conscious, the best way to keep your cost down is to schedule a consultation and try to do as much as the installation work on your own as possible. A design cost estimate will be provided by Blue Hibiscus Gardens once initial consultation phase is done. Most consultations take 1-2 hours. Drive time to and from the site is charged at half rate.

The most important factor for Blue Hibiscus Gardens is to provide you a garden with as much of your wishlist as is feasible. The design of the home and your favorite plants are all taken into consideration during the planning. Blue Hibiscus Gardens can give you guidance on coordinating the exterior of your home with your landscape. In addition to a design you will enjoy, a major goal of Blue Hibiscus Gardens is to present a garden that is environmentally and horticulturally sound with water conserving plants.

If you are interested in working with Blue Hibiscus Gardens, please send an email inquiry, and we will send an online questionnaire for you to complete. Your answers will be used to determine if the firm can help you and later in the design process to pick plants and materials. Please send photos of your garden along with the answers. After reviewing your responses, Blue Hibiscus Gardens will schedule a short and free phone call to go over your questionnaire and any other questions you may. After the phone call, if Blue Hibiscus Gardens and you decide to move onto the next stage, we will schedule a paid, on-site visit. We will tell you how much you can expect to pay for the consultation.

Blue Hibiscus Gardens can provide you with referrals to licensed landscape contractors. It does not provide direct installation services.

Blue Hibiscus Gardens only does residential site plans, and enjoys working with contractors as well as homeowners for different sizes of jobs from suggesting upgrades to complete yard designs. Our preferred style is lower water gardens that do well in our Mediterranean climate. If your site needs MWELO applications, Blue Hibiscus Gardens is happy to handle the all the math and water usage calculations for you. However, certain cities will require independent, third-party irrigation designers or irrigation reviewers. Therefore, as a homeowner, please plan for the extra cost of these third-party services. Blue Hibiscus Gardens can refer you to additional resources you may need such as fine gardening, maintenance, irrigation audit and licensed landscape contractors.

Please note that we do not hold any indoor meetings. We are happy to wear masks, are fully vaccinated and boosted, but we still only hold outdoor or virtual meetings only.