If you can design an interior space online, then why couldn’t you do an online design for an exterior space?
That was the question Allison and Adam Messner asked each other before launching Yardzen, a completely online landscape design service this February.
The entrepreneurial Mill Valley couple, both of who share a passion for reinventing spaces for themselves and their friends, figured it could be a game changer.
“We just love helping people get more out of their outdoor spaces,” Allison says. “We believe that outdoor spaces have more transformative power than even indoor spaces.”
She recalls reading that more than half of all home buyers would be willing to sacrifice a bigger house to get better outdoor living spaces. “I totally believe it,” she says.
Part of the beauty of operating online, she adds, is that “as we build tools to deliver fantastic experiences and delight our customers we’re able to help people reinvent outdoor spaces just about anywhere.”
Since the company launched, its team of 14 — including 10 designers and two concierges who guide clients through the process — have taken on 60 projects here in Marin and up and down the West Coast.
“Our designers are wonderfully talented, with a combined 80 years of landscape design experience,” Messner says. “They’ve all studied landscape design or architecture and several have master’s degrees in landscape architecture.”
And, they’re drawn to Yardzen, she says, because it gives a them flexible way to work on “amazing properties” in different regions.
Yardzen offers a free design consultation by telephone or email, and a choice of two design packages: either a front or backyard package for $995 or a full yard package for $1,495.
Clients start the process by completing a design profile and then get matched with a designer who works hand-in-hand with them until the design is produced two weeks later.
The profile is “how we learn who they are, their hobbies and interests, their house and its flow and anything challenging about how if functions today,” she says. “Then, there are a bunch of questions about the client’s design aesthetic.”
This allows Yardzen’s designers to understand who the clients are and how they live, then pair that with the property’s unique characteristics such as location, slope, sunlight and drainage to create a design tailored specifically to help the clients get more out of their outdoor living spaces.”
Local nurseries offer landscape design services that usually involve site visits, but Messner notes that her company is the first service to offer landscape design completely.
Her teams use a combination of satellite technology, publicly available information, client-submitted photos and videos and email to create a site plan with no site visits.
“We have yet to encounter a property for which Yardzen doesn’t work,” she says. “And, it’s different from anything else that exists in that we don’t just create traditional landscape plans with plants and hardscapes, but include everything from outdoor living areas to kids’ play spaces to kitchen gardens.”
The plans are lifelike 3-D-renderings that show clients exactly how their finished outdoor spaces will look.
Plans “can take a contractor pretty far in terms of specifying something like a deck or a pergola that requires engineering, however they don’t include specific dimensions.”
They leave that to the contractors who generally prefer to engineer these elements themselves. If necessary, Yardzen can refer vetted licensed contractors.
Clients can incorporate their existing plants into the plans, choose any design style from traditional, modern or tropical to Japanese, European or Mediterranean, and specify any color palette or request irrigation schemes. Plant suggestions come with instructions for proper spacing, cultivation and watering needs.
“Adding functional outdoor spaces is the most cost-effective way to add livable square footage to a home,” Messner says. “And you can realistically boost a home value by 12 percent with a cohesive, beautiful landscape design.”
This fact, alone, she thinks, could be advantageous for real estate agents who can use the renderings to help buyers imagine a more pleasing landscape for properties with neglected gardens.
Then again, the possibility of a beautiful garden may make sellers decide they want to stay, after all.
Call 650-906-8115 or go to yardzen.com.
• Learn how to help sustain the local bee population from beekeeping experts who will be at Sloat Garden Center stores to explain equipment, observation hives, frames, combs and more at 10 a.m. Saturday at 401 Miller Ave in Mill Valley (415-388-0365), noon June 27 at 700 Sir Francis Drake Blvd. in Kentfield (415-454-0262) or noon June 30 at 2000 Novato Blvd. in Novato (415-897-2169). Admission is free for members or $10. Go to sloatgardens.com.
• Volunteer to help spruce up Peacock Gap by spreading mulch, cleaning playground equipment or weeding from 9 a.m. to noon Saturday in support of San Rafael’s Park-a-Month program. Call 415-485-3071 for the meeting location.
• Join Vision SGV and permaculture expert Penny Livingston Stark as she shares principles, strategies and examples of how to create an ecosystem that benefits humans, wildlife and the environment during a free soup-and-salad dinner with fiddle music and presentation of “How Farms can be a Beneficial Presence to the Land” at 6 p.m. June 28 at the San Geronimo Valley Community Center at 350 Sir Francis Drake Blvd. in San Geronimo. Bring your own bowl and utensils. Questions? Email email@example.com.
• Get the most out of your herb garden when Kier Holmes discusses the best sun or shade herbs in a free talk, “Herb Growing Essentials,” from 7 to 9 p.m. July 9 in the Creekside Room at the Mill Valley Public Library at 375 Throckmorton Ave. in Mill Valley. Call 415-389-4292 or go to millvalleylibrary.org.
PJ Bremier writes on home, garden, design and entertaining topics every Saturday and also on her blog at DesignSwirl.co. She may be contacted at P.O. Box 412, Kentfield 94914, or at firstname.lastname@example.org.