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Landscaping Materials: Where Do They Come From?

Hardwood and natural stone, tall trees and flowering plants – these are just a few of the materials that may end up in your yard if you’re building a landscape with Hursthouse. After we’ve presented the  Conceptual Designs and you’ve made specific choices about what you want in your landscape, we’ll prepare your Final Design. That means selecting and pricing the exact materials we’ll use to build.

That process is often different at Hursthouse than it is at other landscaping companies. Here are the guidelines we always follow when selecting your landscape materials.

Your design, not our convenience, drives our choices.

It’s common for landscaping companies to keep particular plants in stock or to work with particular brands or suppliers for all landscaping materials. That’s fine for them – but as the old saying goes, when all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.

At Hursthouse we deliberately have a much wider range in our materials selection, because we want to plan your landscape based on your lifestyle – not based on what’s in our back lot. That means working with a lot more suppliers than is common.

Husthouse Landscape Designer and V.P. of Operations, Jeff True puts it this way: “If a typical landscaping company has 10 vendors, we have 50.”

Hand-selected.

Because your design drives our choices, members of the Hursthouse team will hand-select the crucial elements of your landscape to make sure they’re a fit. That means, for example, that we don’t just choose what kind of tree belongs in your yard – we select the exact tree.

“We’ll go to one nursery just for that one key tree if we need to,” True says. “We’ll either walk the nursery in person and pick the tree, or we’ll call a lot of nurseries and ask them to send us photos to select from. Either way, we want to see the exact tree before we get it for your landscape.”

Locally grown.

Speaking of trees and plants, it’s important that the living things that make up your landscape are well suited to live there. Since Hursthouse is in the Chicago area, that means only using plants that were grown in northern Illinois.

“We’re in a precarious location here,” True says. “Wisconsin doesn’t get the heat we do, but southern Illinois doesn’t have the same kind of winter weather. We want to make sure the plants we select are acclimated to the soil and suited for the weather right here where our clients live.”

Right from the source.

Hursthouse works with a lot of natural stone. Whenever possible, we buy directly from the quarry.

“There’s quality bluestone, for example – and then there’s garbage,” True says. “Working directly with the quarry helps us know the quality and durability of what we’re using in your landscape. We can ensure it’ll be cut well, and know it won’t ever crack or flake apart over the years.”

Does sourcing materials in this way mean your Final Design takes a little longer? Absolutely. But it helps your landscape stand the test of time – a trade-off our clients seem to feel is worth the wait.

If you’re planning a new landscape in Chicago and you haven’t already started the Hursthouse design process, you can request a first meeting with this form. We’d love to work with you.