Bringing nature home: the secret to amazing landscaping
What separates truly exceptional landscape design from the ordinary? Think about it. Can you articulate exactly what the greatest landscapes have in common? What is the secret to amazing landscaping and landscape design?
Carmel Landscapes discovered the answer hidden in the wild spaces of Northeast Ohio—and we bring those secrets directly to your backyard.
The most stunning landscapes don’t fight against nature, they learn from it. While some designers might impose rigid patterns and non-native plants that struggle to survive, we’ve built our reputation on a different approach that makes outdoor spaces feel both personal and effortlessly sustainable.
When nature was our playground
Being raised in rural Geauga County, Ohio, outdoor living spaces were not a thing for me. I can remember playing on Bell Street with friends for hours without a single car passing. We had acres of woods and fields to play and live in. Sometimes I stayed out longer than originally planned because as kids there was a lot to explore. Getting lost in the woods as an 8-year-old child was a little traumatic, but I can look back today and remember all the amazing sites we saw. All the secrets hidden in the heavily wooded forests.
Those secrets of the forest are the same secrets that make an amazing landscape design come to life.
My friends and I trekked through miles of sandstone-laced creek that cut its way deep into the earth, showcasing walls of century-old rock chiseled by the rain that gave way to charming waterfalls. Ancient trees shadowed the creek below from the plateau above as their roots snaked down the cliff, exposing some of mother nature’s most prized landscape designs. As we followed the creek that meandered through the forest, we were met with a medley of her most precious designs. There were ponds that created an ecosystem for the local wildlife and augmented their shorelines, fabricating wetlands filled with towering sycamores and thickets of irises. We tramped through what felt like miles of red twig dogwood in soil so saturated, I once lost my shoe.
Today, those childhood observations guide how we approach every landscape project.
Learning to read the land
Without realizing it, I was learning to read the landscape. Which plants thrived where. How water moved through different terrains. Where wildlife gathered and why. These lessons now inform how Carmel Landscapes creates sustainable landscape designs for our clients.
From those creek beds, persistence steered us to higher ground that ushered in vast meadows packed with insects. Covered in mud and constantly itching, we were hyper-aware of the situation and too naive to see what we were really walking through. So focused on finding our way back, we passed masses of cup plants that dominated the boundaries of the meadow and complemented the array of echinacea, black-eyed Susans, and ironweed poking their colorful petals through the tall brambles and grasses of the landscape.
When we create rain gardens, we’re essentially recreating those wetland systems I encountered as a child. Instead of just dumping storm water through traditional means into the Chagrin River, which ultimately ends up in Lake Erie, we implement responsible watershed practices that naturally filter and drain stormwater by deploying native plant options to cultivate biodiverse ecosystems in your backyard.
Making nature accessible
Today, outdoor spaces are more accessible. They’re accessible right in our own backyards.
One of our focuses as a landscape development company is to mitigate the impact of progress. Progress being economic and building progress that swallows up acreage in the name of housing and businesses to support our lifestyles.
As landscape designers, our goal is to create systems with our clients that sustain the ecosystem around them. This is where true beauty in landscape design comes from. Learning from nature.
Now this doesn’t mean you can’t have another outbuilding for all your cool stuff, or can’t expand your office space to navigate your success. It means we can partner with you to design exterior spaces that focus on what impact your goals may have on your surrounding landscape.
Creating modern outdoor experiences
There was no single day in the woods that was the turning point in my life when I made a decision to run a landscaping company. I have an innate desire to be in outdoor spaces.
That desire drives our intentional approach to outdoor living design. The modern-day outdoor spaces designed by Carmel Landscapes are packed with everything nature has to offer, and you won’t have to get lost in the woods to enjoy it. We bring ambient character to your backyard with modern conveniences such as outdoor kitchens and gas fire pits to increase evocative memories that shape your lifestyle and increase your usable space.
Spaces that not only are responsibly designed with nature, but also foster friendships and meaningful relationships. We seek to create welcoming arenas, guiding visitors with entertainment value from expansive patios and pathways within beautiful outdoor living spaces. Using biophilic structures that point back to nature, you can focus on the unfolding conversations and memories that are being made in your own perfect outdoor space.
The bigger picture
When my friends and I realized we were lost in the woods, we stumbled upon a small development with manicured lawns and stately homes that screamed equestrian in Novelty, where the owner called our parents. Even though we were gone the whole day, my mother claims the car ride home was a minuscule 15 minutes. This event does come up in passing family conversation here and there, and it’s a reminder of how big our world really is and the broad arrangement of landscape ideas exterior designers get to utilize.
That realization shapes our philosophy today as a landscape design company. We understand that even within suburban developments, there’s tremendous opportunity to create landscapes that connect people to the natural world around them. By incorporating native plants like those cup plants, echinacea, and ironweed into our designs, we’re not just creating beautiful spaces—we’re supporting the local ecosystem and giving families their own accessible slice of that childhood wonder.
Ready to transform your property into a sustainable sanctuary? Contact Carmel Landscapes to discover how we can bring the wonder of nature to your backyard while protecting the environment for generations to come.