Our first landscape work began in 1975, with the first Appeldoorn Greenhouses & Nursery operation in Asheville, NC. Since that time, we have completed projects for apartment complexes and condominiums, churches, businesses, restaurants, and residences, both indoors and out. We have done water gardens, contemplation gardens, memorial gardens, rock gardens, patios, staircases, grand tropical display gardens in garden shows and much more.
The mountain and Piedmont areas of western North Carolina have a long heritage of building styles and outdoor living patterns that demand quality landscape design and installation.
From formal entertaining to rustic elegance, the need for comfortable, usable outdoor living areas is increasingly at a premium as people seek to more fully utilize their property. Safe and soft lawn areas for children’s play activities, walking trails to the lake or prominent landscape features, and barbecue patio areas are all examples of increasing the uses of your available land.
Careful discussion now of how you want to use the available space can result in real increased value for your property in the future. And this is where we begin the project, with careful consideration and design.
From conceptual factors come the design; from the desire for beauty evolves the image.
The decisions as to what plants are used and why should be based upon the function and the environment of the property. The environment must be carefully assessed for information as to what might not just survive but flourish on the property. Factors like sun/shade, soil type and depth, rainfall, wind, elevation, temperatures, and animal predation must be assessed.
Addressing Potential Environmental Issues Key to Addressing a Strong Installation
Add to this the personal preferences of the clients, the problems on the site (like erosion and how water moves), pedestrian flow, the support systems (such as irrigation) that might be added and how the property blends into the community, and the image starts to flush out. Then come the plant choices—but only after so many other factors have been weighed and balanced. Clearly, this thoughtful process undertaken by experienced and caring individuals is very different from just stopping by the local garden center and picking up a few of whatever is appealingly in bloom at that moment. And the difference in the overall results achieved can be astounding.
For many of our clients, our work proceeds in stages. Priorities must be set as to what is most important to be accomplished within the available budget. “Do I want to work on the entry, or do I have to solve that erosion problem in the back yard?” Next year will provide a different priority and budget, and after several stages that original set of work projects might be called completed.
But a landscape should evolve over time around the residence. Almost by definition, the project is rarely, if ever, finished, nor should it be. There will always be fine-tuning and refinement. New plants are added as older ones succumb to the forces of nature over time, as we all must. A new structure is added. Trails are extended. “I would like to give my wife a rose garden.” The list goes on and on, and the landscape continues to evolve.
And all the projects add cumulatively to the value of the home. By adding growing beauty that you can enjoy now, you add equity for the time when you must move on. Remember, properly cared for, your landscape grows in appearance and value over time. Water and maintenance causes the value of your home to increase, naturally.
We at Appeldoorn Landscape Nursery know that planning and hard physical work are at the heart of the project, but that some of the hard work can be tempered with the use of proper tools and equipment. For construction phase, the use of tractors and skid-steers can allow the movement of large and heavy objects like rock and larger plantings—and such objects can add a sense of time and permanence unavailable with other means.
Modern mechanized equipment allows us to dig and transplant specimen plants up to 4 and 5 inches in diameter with ease. Our Optimal tree spade is the best in the business, giving professionally dug root balls up to 33” in diameter with maximum success rates of transplanting.
When properly timed with the growing season, even tough subjects like hickory can often be successfully relocated. This ability gives our customers and architects the ability to mark and move prominent valuable plantings before construction begins at the site. Thus, with proper planning you can preserve the bountiful treasures naturally growing on your home site—the ones nature intended to be there. We then supplement those with the best the world has to offer. And viola!