FAQ
Landscape Design in North Hills, answered
The questions we hear most from North Hills homeowners.
A scaled plan of your property showing the layout as it will be built. It marks dimensions, the footprint of every paved area and structure, material selections, and a planting layout naming what goes where. Grading and drainage intent are noted, along with the routes irrigation and lighting will take. The point is that you can look at a sheet of paper and know what the finished yard will be before any money goes into the ground. Anything unclear at that stage is far cheaper to change on paper than to change once construction starts.
It assesses the things a drawing cannot invent. Sun and shade through the day, which counts for more here than most people expect because the yard is open with little relief. Soil condition, drainage behavior and where water sits after a storm, sight lines from windows and seating positions into neighboring property, the location and root zone of existing trees, and the condition of everything already installed. On flat North Hills parcels there is almost no grade to record, so the walk spends its time on exposure, privacy, and what is already in the ground.
Four levers do the work: layout, privacy, shade, and water use. On a sloped property the terrain dictates terracing, wall placement, and where a patio can physically sit, which decides half the plan before anyone draws anything. North Hills lots give none of that, so every choice has to be justified on use rather than necessity. Where do you sit in the morning, where are you exposed, where does afternoon sun make a space unusable, and how much of the yard do you want to irrigate. Answer those and the layout follows.
By building it in, since a flat tract lot inherits none. We map sight lines from the seating areas and from the windows you use most, then place screening exactly where those lines run instead of ringing the whole yard. That might be a hedge along one stretch, a pergola with a solid side panel over the lounge zone, a raised bed with tall planting, or a freestanding wall. Doing it selectively costs less and does not close the yard in. Screening is drawn at mature height so you know how it will look once it fills.
Everything gets drawn against real dimensions rather than eyeballed. A dining table with chairs pulled out needs a defined footprint, a path needs a width two people can pass on, and an outdoor kitchen needs working clearance behind the cook. On modest North Hills lots, features imported from larger properties are the most common way a yard gets ruined, so we test each element against what is left over around it. If a feature leaves no comfortable space, it comes down in size or off the plan. Restraint reads as intentional. Overcrowding never does.
Yes, and we design with that in mind from the first sketch. The plan shows the complete yard, then breaks it into stages that can be built independently without any stage undoing another. Buried work goes first, so drainage, sleeves, and irrigation mainline are placed for the whole plan even if only part of the paving or planting goes in now. Practical budgets are the norm in North Hills, and a phased plan lets a yard be finished properly over time instead of compromised all at once. Nothing gets built twice.
It does, and that is a significant part of the work here. A design for a property in the Sepulveda area is almost always a design over something, not a design on blank ground. We record what exists, note the condition of the old irrigation and concrete, identify the planting worth keeping and the planting that is simply old, and show on the plan what gets removed. Decades of piecemeal changes tend to leave a yard with no logic to it at all. The plan is where that logic gets put back.
An outdoor room is a defined area with a purpose and an edge, the same idea as rooms inside a house. A dining area near the kitchen door, a lounge area around a fire feature, a utility zone for bins and equipment, a planted area you look at rather than walk through. Dividing a North Hills back yard this way is what stops it reading as one leftover rectangle. Edges come from paving changes, planting, level changes, or a low wall. Even on a compact lot, two well defined rooms beat one undefined space.
Circulation is how people actually move, and it gets planned before the surfaces are drawn. We trace the routes used every day: back door to seating, side gate to bins, house to garage, hose bib to beds. Paths follow those lines instead of cutting decorative curves nobody walks. Widths are set by use, so a main route carries two people side by side while a service path does not need to. Getting this right on a small North Hills lot matters, because a badly placed path wastes space the yard cannot spare.
Exposure comes first, then water, then size at maturity. The west and south sides of an open North Hills yard take hard afternoon sun and need material that tolerates it, while a narrow north side stays shaded most of the day and wants something different. Plants sharing water needs get grouped so a single irrigation zone suits all of them. Mature dimensions are checked against the available space so nothing has to be sheared into a box in three years. Appearance matters, but it is the last filter applied, not the first.
Hydrozoning means grouping plants by how much water they need and putting each group on its own irrigation zone. Without it, one zone runs long enough to satisfy the thirstiest plant and drowns everything else, wasting water and killing plants at the same time. The plan assigns those zones before installation, so trees, shrubs, and any lawn area are separated rather than mixed together. Given California water restrictions and the pressure on water use in any North Hills yard, this is one of the design decisions with the clearest ongoing payoff.
Yes. Grade and drainage intent are set on paper, not improvised later with a shovel. The plan shows which direction each surface falls, where water is collected, and where it is taken. Flat ground in North Hills makes this deliberate work, because there is no natural fall to rely on and water simply sits where it lands. Deciding drainage during design also determines paving elevations, drain locations, and whether a low area needs filling. Every one of those is close to impossible to correct once the hardscape is in.
They are on the plan before construction, which is the only sensible time to place them. Irrigation zones, valve locations, and mainline routes get drawn so trenching happens once and in the right sequence. Lighting is planned as circuits and fixture positions, with sleeves shown wherever a run has to cross under paving. On a North Hills project where paving may go in during one phase and lighting during a later one, those sleeves have to be in the ground the first time. Retrofitting under a finished patio is not a small job.
Take the dimensions off the plan and lay them out at home. Measure your table and chairs, mark that footprint on the ground with tape, a hose, or chalk, and stand inside it. Set a real chair where the lounge seating is drawn and look at what you see from it. This is the check that catches problems no drawing reveals, such as a patio technically large enough that turns tight once chairs move. We encourage clients to do this before approving, because a change made on paper costs nothing.
Because a plan drawn at nursery size tells you nothing true about the finished yard. Every plant is shown at the dimensions it will reach, so you can see whether the shrub beside the walkway will eventually block it and whether a tree will shade the patio you wanted sunny. It also explains the spacing, which looks generous on installation day. Homeowners often push for everything closer together to look full immediately, and that is exactly how a North Hills yard ends up overgrown in a few years and needing another renovation.
The plan is meant to be revised, so we expect to go back and forth. The first version is a proposal based on the site walk and what you told us you want, and it is normal for that to be wrong in a few places, since people react to a drawing far more clearly than to a conversation. We adjust layout, swap materials, resize zones, and move planting until the sheet matches what you actually want. Approval comes after that, not before. Every change made at this stage is made with a pencil.
The same company does both. Daniels Landscaping designs and builds. The crew building your North Hills yard is our own, which is why the plan does not drift during construction into whatever was easiest for an outside trade. When the people who drew the drainage intent are the same people setting the grade, details survive. Design and build under one roof also means a single point of responsibility for both the plan and the finished result.
Start with a call to (818) 443-9300 and we will schedule a site walk at your North Hills property. We look at exposure, drainage, sight lines, existing trees, and the condition of what is already installed, and we talk through how you want to use the yard. From there you receive a plan to review and revise, along with a free written estimate for the construction it describes. Our California license number is 1138709, and every project is Built under one licensed contractor. Phasing can be written into the plan if that suits your budget.