"An avid environmentalist, Honey likes connecting cultivated gardens to the surrounding landscape."

Virginia Small

Landscape design is multi-faceted. It combines horticulture, ecology, architecture and art. As a landscape designer, Honey Sharp emphasizes their dynamic interaction as she weaves together the natural and the human.

Ultimately, nature offer its own answers. Based on years of experience, Honey Sharp works on revealing and enhancing the given landscape - be they autumn's golden birches rambling along a stone wall or trout lilies on the forest floor. Keenly aware of New England's heritage and changing seasons, she seeks to uncover the spirit of the place.

Rooted in an ecological and sustainable approach, Honey Sharp endorses hardy, native plants, chemical free lawns and wildscapes such as meadows, wetlands or woodlands. Each environment plays a role in attracting small creatures, be they monarch butterflies, dragonflies, bluebirds or hummingbirds.

With this in mind Honey Sharp provides design and consultation services to clients in the tri-state Berkshire area of Western Massachusetts.

Overview Discussions

A fundamental starting point focuses on how the client will best enjoy his or her surrounding landscape and outdoor rooms. In-depth discussions with a client take place before and during a job. Priorities, needs and goals are explored. Ranging from key outdoor views from a kitchen window to a favorite color palette, she delves into a wide range of topics related to the entire landscape.

With the client, she develops creative, esthetic and practical solutions with a long-term perspective. Be it the client’s desire to wander along a path through a shade garden, enjoy summer herbs and vegetables or simply cut a few flowers in a cottage garden, the possibilities are many.

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Landscape Assessment and Design

The relationship of the landscape to its buildings is a starting point. This may include the approach from the road to the property, the parking area or a path leading to the house. Questions are brought up such as: How is the hardscape integrated with the gardens? Is the house “rooted”? Are the gardens inviting and do they flow together? Where does outdoor entertaining take place? Also noteworthy are potential opportunities for borrowed landscapes — or the inverse: greater privacy. Selective clearing or building a wooden fence may be the answer.

Honey Sharp will provide a site analysis by evaluating soil, topography, sun/shade, water, pests, invasive species and more. She may also perform a general overview and inventory of the existing vegetation. Before introducing new plant material, Honey Sharp believes in restoring, recycling and, if possible, native plants..

When it comes to plant material, trees and shrubs are paramount. They anchor the landscape while also offering important focal points. By playing up unusual focal points — boulders or a 19th century stone well-cover, enhanced with rust colored lichen — she finds perfect opportunities for a garden.

In her designs, she develops complimentary and exciting color and texture combinations. Although native plants form a foundation to many of her gardens, she also indulges in exotic bulbs, annuals, grasses or tender perennials. Unexpected bed partners are another fun way to enhance the personality of a garden. Why not mix edible, elegant dark jade kale with blood red dahlias? (See Honey Sharp's article “Unusual Bed Fellows.”)



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Implementation

With a long-term, written Master Plan, Honey Sharp will oversee garden installations. She also believes in a flexible ‘hands-on’ approach where innovative and concrete solutions often emerge. From designing and performing on-site markings to purchasing and installing high quality plant material, she will work either with the client’s gardeners or her own subcontractors, including masons and arborists. Finally, she will offer a maintenance plan, an important component of a job.