Design is the heart of our business. Mel personally handles all of our design work, from initial convo to project close. She designs custom spaces for you.

PLACE works with clients of diverse backgrounds, income levels, gardening ambitions, and locales. We don’t believe projects can be ‘too big’ or ‘too small.’ We love em all. Mel has done container planting for fire escape railings and worked as a live-in gardener on a 200-acre private estate.

For clients within 1h of Richmond, Mel will come to you. For clients further afield, she is available to design remotely; it’s surprisingly simple! Mel does design work in New England during the summer and Australia during the winter, so she has a beat on myriad planting climates.

Mel doesn’t believe in hard and fast garden rules — except for the old plantsman principle: “Right plant, right place.” (Yep, that’s how PLACE got its name!)

All design work starts with an initial consult and includes soil testing, detailed measurements, style survey, midpoint consult, thoughtful design drawings, plant lists, implementation planning, and care guidance.

Mel designs plans spanning from one season (1S) to five years (5Y). She works with DIY clients, who take her designs and bring them to life; clients who want PLACE to manage the material sourcing and installation, but will handle ongoing care; and full-service clients, for whom PLACE handles every detail of design, sourcing, install, and care.

Each design is carefully tailored to the way you live, what you love, and how you spend your time. In every project, Mel’s goal is to create a space of ease, peace, delight, and surprise for you to enjoy.

We are able to provide installation and care services for all of our design clients.

Our garden team, always led onsite by Mel and/or John, takes care to make the install process seamless, with an emphasis on building soil quality, leaving every space better than we found it.

We have a tight-knit and experienced crew. We are proud of their dedication, integrity, and creativity.

We also provide care services, ranging from regular maintenance to precision pruning to invasive removal to soil science, as well as our care bread-and-butter: weeding.

This is a sick confession, but Mel lives to weed. Since she founded PLACE and has discovered new worlds like ‘payroll’ and ‘business licensing,’ she has had less time to explore her passion. But if Mel arrives at a restaurant before the rest of her group, you just might find her weeding the parking lot!

We guarantee all of our installation and care work.

If you are pressed for time or working with a smaller budget, garden consulting and/or coaching is a fab alternative to our full design process.

If your garden stresses you out, you are in fulsome company. We can’t tell you how many times we are greeted with an apology for invasive overgrowth or unwieldy plantings or half-started yard projects.

Please know that we are absolutely non-judgmental, warm, and caring company on the journey to zhuzh up your places. There is nothing to be sorry about! Life is hard, busy, and brief; we’d love to take something off your plate.

Mel will visit you on site and provide real-time guidance on how to tackle your project. She will then write a how-to memo containing a simple garden plan, implementation instructions, and additional resources.

If you are struggling with a particular area, plant problem, or vision, we also offer coaching services to help you move forward. We will walk you through how to plant, prune, create a curvilinear victorian trench edge (for instance!), train a climbing rose (for example!), or anything else you might be curious about.

Coaching is tailored to your needs; we can visit once or on a recurring basis. For those further afield, we offer both services remotely, via videochat.

And yes, we offer consults and coaching for indoor plants!

Feel so overwhelmed you want to pass out when you step into a nursery? Don’t know where to find huge planters for under one billion dollars or outdoor furniture that doesn’t cramp your style?

Through years of trial-and-error, we have gotten sourcing down to a science and would love to make recommendations or accompany you on a buy. This is one of our fav parts of the job!

We are quite particular (‘aesthetically sensitive,’ perhaps?) when it comes to plants and furnishings; we buy the best. We work with local nurseries and small businesses at every available opportunity.

PLACE has established trade partnerships with a wide range of brands we love. We proudly source from:

Local nurseries, including Bright Seed Gardens, Boulevard Flower Gardens, Colesville Nursery, Cross Creek Nursery, Greenwitch Gardens & Native Plants, Jubilant Gardens, Moulton Hot Natives, Sandy’s Plants, Sneed’s, and The Gardener Nursery.

Outdoor furniture, decor, and supply stores, including Anthropologie, Article, Block Shop, Business & Pleasure Co, Crate & Barrel, CB2, Design Within Reach, Goodee, House of Léon, IKEA, Kettal, Kingsley Bate, Munder Skiles, Neighbor, Nickey Kehoe, ORCA, Outer, Pottery Barn, Rejuvenation, Restoration Hardware, Room & Board, Serena & Lily, Sundays, Veradek, and Williams Sonoma Home.

Specialty suppliers, including Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, Botanical Interests, David Austin, Farmer Bailey, and Gardeners Supply Co.

Learn more about our business ethos here.

We welcome the opportunity to work with commercial, municipal, non-profit, and institutional clients. If your office park, recovery center, coffee shop, or concert venue needs garden work, give us a shout.

We also love to collaborate on planting design projects with real estate brokers, interior designers, architects, landscape architects, and other professionals.

For everything else that’s related to the world of gardening, landscaping, and plants but not mentioned here — or if you don’t know which type of service you might need — just ask us!

If we can’t do it, we’ll tell you who can. We adore Richmond’s generous horticulture community and are happy to spread the work around.