DESIGN · LANDSCAPE DESIGN
Landscape design as a contract with the ground.
A landscape design at Alterra is what gets drawn before the ground moves — a plan that accounts for what the soil already is, which trees will outlive the project, and how the place will read a decade after the final plant goes in.
What landscape design means at Alterra.
A finished landscape design at Alterra is a coordinated drawing set, not a mood board. It includes the site plan that places the house, the hardscape, and the planted edges against each other; the planting plan that names every species with quantity, size, and placement; the grading and drainage plan that moves water away from the house and onto the soils that can receive it; the irrigation plan with manifold locations and zone logic; hardscape sections detailing terraces, steps, and walls at built-line dimensions; and the lighting plan if the project calls for it. What you walk away with is enough drawing for a different firm to build from — though in practice the firm building from it will be the same Principal who drew it.
The palette is shaped by what DFW soils and climate can support without argument. East of the Trinity, on the Blackland Prairie, the ground is calcareous clay with an alkaline pH that rejects acid-loving imports and rewards the natives the prairie was already making — Quercus fusiformis and Q. virginiana live oaks, Juniperus virginiana eastern red cedar, sideoats grama (Bouteloua curtipendula, the Texas state grass) and its mixed-prairie companions. Farther west, the Eastern Cross Timbers offers sandy loam where Quercus stellata post oak holds the canopy and a different understory wants to live. USDA zones 8a and 8b set the temperature envelope, and after February 2021 we read that envelope conservatively.
Craft lives in the detailing. Lueders limestone quarried two hours west of Dallas is the stone this region was already using for walls and terraces before we arrived; Pennsylvania bluestone shows up where the register calls for a cooler tone; pea gravel and decomposed granite carry the path work. Mortar chemistry is called out on terrace details, not assumed. Joint dimensions are drawn, not guessed. Tree protection zones are marked before grading. None of this is ornamentation on a plan — it is the level of specification a Principal needs because the Principal is the one building the plan.
See also: native palettes, Blackland Prairie, Cross Timbers, and USDA zones 8a–8b.
PROCESS
Where design sits in the arc of the project.
Design is the third of six phases. It follows a First Conversation with a Principal and a Site & Story walkthrough in which we inventory canopy, soils, microclimate, and drainage before the drawing begins. By the time we are on the board, the constraints are already known — which trees are staying, where water wants to move, what the calendar year asks of the space. The drawing set closes that reading into specification. Plans, permits, and build follow from it rather than around it.
Review the Process →WHAT WE DO DIFFERENTLY
Three specifics.
01
Existing canopy as design primitive
We inventory every existing tree on a site before we draw the first line. The mature canopy is a design primitive, not a constraint to work around.
02
Plant choices vetted against the 2021 freeze record
Every species on a plan has been reviewed against the February 2021 freeze event. Species that failed that test are not on our working lists.
03
Irrigation designed with freeze events in mind
Manifolds are located in sheltered microclimates, insulation specs match the exposure, and the drain-and-restart protocol is documented for the homeowner in writing.
The same Principal who drew the plan executes it. See the Build practice and the Resilience section.
SELECTED LANDSCAPE DESIGN