West Vancouver Landscape Design
West Vancouver properties come with a specific set of challenges. Most sit on slopes. Many have protected ocean or inlet views that shape where a terrace can go and how tall the planting can grow. Lots in British Properties and the upper benchlands often carry mature conifers that can't be removed and shouldn't be — which means designing around root zones and deep shade rather than starting from a blank site.
Gardenia Landscaping has been designing landscapes in West Vancouver for over 40 years. That work includes full residential landscape design for new builds, garden renovations on established properties, pool and terrace design, and planting plans for homeowners who want the structure resolved before they commit to construction.
Every project can be modelled in 3D before construction begins. On sloped view lots this matters more than anywhere else: sightlines and grade changes are difficult to read from a flat plan, and it's far cheaper to move a terrace in a model than on site.
British Properties Single Family Residence
The brief. A British Properties family wanted their backyard to work as three separate rooms — cooking, dining, and evening fire, without the yard feeling chopped up. The lot had the usual West Vancouver constraints: significant grade change, mature conifers on the property line, and a strong architectural line from the house that any landscape would either complement or fight.
We modelled the entire property in 3D before a single stone was ordered. That let the clients stand inside the design, check sightlines from the kitchen window, and confirm the fire pit terrace felt generous rather than tight, all while changes still cost nothing but time.
The same terraces, the same charcoal retaining walls, the same planting beds, built to the dimensions modelled. Grade is resolved through a series of low walls that double as seating and planting edge, so the transition between levels reads as intentional rather than as a retaining problem being solved.
Structure came first: hedging, evergreen mass, and architectural foliage carry the design through Vancouver's grey months, with seasonal colour layered on top rather than relied upon.
Tiered charcoal planters step the grade down from the house to the lawn, turning a slope into three deep planting beds. Mass planting in broad drifts -hydrangea, purple-leaved shrubs, low ornamental grasses- reads clearly from the driveway and from above, rather than dissolving into visual noise the way mixed borders do at this scale.
An arrival sequence that gives the mid-century house a proper base, plus a sheltered fire pit terrace tucked against the north face where the mature conifers give privacy on all sides.
Contact
Serving Vancouver, the North Shore, and Metro Vancouver.
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