Aloha and welcome to Jyo Shankar - a place to document all my world travels with hopes to inspire you to visit the same.
I’m Jyo
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Our experience with Yardzen
I can’t believe it’s soon going to be a year since we moved into our new home! For 2022, one of our main goals was to redo our entire outdoor space. Initially, we were so lost on how we wanted to do this; but right about then we stumbled upon Yardzen – an amazing online landscape design platform that assigns a talented landscape designer to create a just-for-you design, factoring your style and your property’s unique characteristics. The whole process was so seamless and easy, right from start of the design consult to hooking us up with one of their verified contractors.
Yardzen has different packages to choose from – from just planting design or landscape design alone to a landscape + planting + exterior design! We opted for the Outdoor Transformation package which included :
custom Landscape and hardscape design for the full yard ( for us this included front, side and back yard)
custom exterior design
dedicated Design team
design revision
match with vetted contractor
shoppable furniture and materials
Here is a quick low down on it works :
1 ) Day 1 : Share Your Vision
This is the first step where you get to share your vision with the team. You get to go through their YardBuilder budget exercise, and share photos, videos, and inspiration images. You also get to send them before images and videos so that they can use that for their 3D renders.
I had a vision of creating a minimalist front yard with a wooden fence with lots of water resistant plants and stones to keep it simple. The fence would also help us get more space in the front and added privacy which was something we were looking for. For the side we wanted lots of tropical plants and space for entertaining such as a pergola and paved patio. For the backyard I wanted a small lawn patch for Lola, as well as a second paved patio right outside our master bedroom.
2 ) Week 1-3 : Design
Yardzen’s team of designers and horticulturalists get to work creating a custom design for your unique property. Seeing our vision come to life was so incredible, the 3D renders looked so beautiful! We couldn’t wait to start our project.
Our front, side and backyard design renders
3 ) Week 3-6 : Design Revision
This is the time where you will review your detailed renders and go through a thorough revision process before finalizing your design. We did want to make a few changes in our initial renders which we let our designer know, so that he could make these changes in the revised version of the renders.
4 ) Week 6-7 : Build
Here is where they connect you with a vetted Pro Network contractor to install your design
5 ) Post Week 7 : Yard project
This is the time you literally have shovels in the ground. Timelines here can vary depending on the contractor and scope of the project.
For us it took about 3 months from start to finish since we had to do a ton of demolition before the project could even get started. Right now our entire yard is fully landscaped and hardscaped and we are so thrilled with the new yard.
These are some before and afters ( only with the hardscape/landscape done). Cant wait to show it once again when its fully furnished with decor, the pergola as well as patio furniture.
Our next step – to build the pergola ( which we decided to do ourselves instead of with the contractor) as well as furnishing and decorating the space, which we hopefully plan to finish bu sometime in the summer. We are in no rush so we are taking our time!
I will leave you with some quick photos showing our new yard sans any decor/furniture. We loved having a little backyard picnic to inaugurate our new lawn!
FRONT YARD :
SIDE YARD ( without pergola)
BACK YARD :
For more updates you can always follow along on my Instagram or check out my Yardzen IG highlight reel.
Thanks for stopping by. xoxo
Jyo
Disclaimer : Thanks to Yardzen for collaborating on the design process of this project.
