Garden Design and Creation: Transform Your Green Space

Garden design and creation is a process that brings together technical, aesthetic, and functional aspects, with the ultimate goal of shaping a harmonious, usable, and sustainable green space. At Aprus, we pursue this with passion mostly across Umbria, Tuscany, Lazio, and Marche. Our focus is to bring to life a green environment where plants and nature seamlessly interact and blend with the architectural elements of outdoor spaces, such as paving, pergolas, canopies, water features, swimming pools, and sports facilities.

Ultimately, designing a garden is landscape project on a smaller scale.

Garden Design and Creation is the Right Choice If You Want to:

• Work alongside expert architects and agronomists who listen closely to your requests and develope a project that perfectly balances your functional, aesthetic, and financial needs.
• Be guided through every stage, from the initial creative concept to the technical and execution phases.
• Design and construct all companion outdoor structures that complement the garden, such as swimming pools, sports courts (tennis, badminton, padel, bocce, pétanque, beach volleyball, etc.), yoga areas, outdoor kitchens, and open-air cinema spaces.
• Bring any style of garden to life: whether Mediterranean, low-environmental-impact (sustainable), terraced, rooftop, rock, English, Italian, Japanese, or even sensory gardens.
• Create a garden in perfect harmony with its surrounding environment.

Our aim is to organize spaces based on the garden’s orientation and the natural play of light and shadow throughout the day. Using sketches, 3D renderings, and virtual models, we present solutions that allow you to visualize exactly how your garden will be transformed, refining the design until it matches your vision and executing it strictly within the agreed budget.

If you have an outdoor space that deserves to be enhanced, this is the right service for you.

Types of Gardens We Create

The spaces we most frequently work on include:

• Gardens and parks for private residences, villas, and country houses.
• Gardens and outdoor spaces for restaurants, designed to be both highly functional for service and visually stunning.
• Gardens with swimming pools.
• Gardens featuring sports facilities.
• Gardens and parks for hotels and agritourisms (farm stays), creating beautiful spaces to enhance the guest experience.
• Vertical gardens and living green walls.
• Sensory gardens for public or private community facilities (such as care homes, nurseries, and municipal parks).

How Landscape Design Works: The Phases

It all begins with an on-site inspection. We meet the client directly in the location that will become their future garden, gathering their needs, tastes, and expectations. During this initial survey, we perform a precise site measurement using total stations or drones equipped with Laser Scanners, GNSS RTK, and cameras specifically configured for aerial photogrammetry. This allows us to accurately map the topography and elevation features of the land. This survey serves as the foundation for all subsequent 2D and 3D modeling and design work.

Concept Design

Following the survey, the first step is the concept design phase. Here, we carefully define the baseline structure, map out the spaces, organize the different areas of the garden, and position the main outdoor accessory structures.

The purpose of the concept design is to serve as a visual tool for dialogue with the client. Through these initial layouts, we visually present the primary vision for the future garden and assess its feasibility together. The flexibility of this phase allows us to adapt and refine the layout easily before moving forward, ensuring the project aligns perfectly with the client’s actual needs and expectations.

At this stage, the client receives a general master plan and axonometric sketches of key views. These are crafted using mixed media techniques, combining ink sketches and watercolors with digital graphic processing and photo compositions (photo insertions). Once the concept design is approved, we move on to the detailed phase.

Detailed Design

During this phase, the layout of the garden areas takes on a more defined form. We develop the detailed design for any outdoor structures—such as swimming pools, fountains, pergolas, canopies, and sports facilities—focusing heavily on materials, paving, technical systems, and garden irrigation.

These are not the only elements we carefully analyze: botanical choices, plant varieties, blooms, outdoor furniture, and lighting are all integrated here. This is where the heart of the project truly takes shape, supported by highly detailed technical drawings, 3D renderings, virtual models, and walkthrough videos. We utilize top-tier software to help our clients vividly visualize the proposed solutions.

Operating with complete transparency, we provide the client with an initial cost estimate for the project’s execution.

Construction Design

The third and final stage of the design process is the construction design phase. Here, we study every minute detail that will define the garden. We draft precise technical layouts for the lighting and irrigation systems, alongside construction details for any custom architectural elements.

The deliverables for this phase include fully dimensioned technical drawings and a final, accurate cost estimate.

Garden Creation

Once the design phase is complete, we move to the creation stage where ideas begin to take shape.  During this stage Aprus handles the complete project supervision, proposing a comprehensive turnkey solution.

The process begins with the earthmoving necessary to define the terrain levels established in the project, followed by the excavations required for the irrigation and garden lighting systems. We then proceed with land shaping and, if needed, the supply of topsoil with specific characteristics tailored to the planned vegetation.

During this phase, we also construct custom outdoor structures and masonry elements, such as retaining walls, water features, swimming ponds, outdoor kitchens, or BBQ areas, fully customized to our clients’ desires.

The plants supplied by Aprus are carefully selected from the finest nursery stock, drawing on the strong commercial partnerships our firm has built over the years with Italy’s leading nurseries.

Special attention is dedicated to selecting specimen trees and the garden’s most prominent focal plants. We offer our clients the unique opportunity to choose personally these plants, directly at the nursery, ensuring that the exact specimen they fall in love with is the one planted in their garden. This hands-on experience makes every garden truly unique, authentic, and deeply customized.

During the creation of private gardens, APRUS closely supervises the unloading and planting phase. This is undoubtedly one of the most delicate moments, as plants experience high levels of stress during transit and handling.

Our goal is to ensure that the nursery stock remains entirely undamaged. To achieve this, we organize dedicated on-site storage areas and guarantee continuous manual watering until each plant is safely in the ground.

While the gardeners care for the plants, specialized technicians install the irrigation system, laying down drip lines and emitters. Ensuring prompt watering immediately after planting is vital to preventing water stress.

Once the trees are anchored, and the hedges and flowerbeds are fully formed, we proceed with the lawn—either through seeding or by laying down instant turf rolls, depending on the project specifications.

Through meticulous project supervision, Aprus oversees every stage described above and is always present on site with the team of agronomists, landscape architects, and technicians.

The Aprus Maintenance Programme

Once the garden is complete, the maintenance phase begins—a crucial step to ensure that the capital and effort invested are not wasted. Landscapes and gardens are living works of art. Unlike a building, where construction or renovation reaches completion when the site closes and whose value is set upon delivery, the closing of a garden’s construction site is only the beginning.

Every garden lives, breathes, feeds, grows, passes, and continuously regenerates. This is why it demands care, close observation, nourishment, and expert hands. Its beauty is destined to grow, expand, inspire wonder, and add immense value to a property, no matter its size.

Even the finest design and the most meticulous execution can end in failure if a rigorous maintenance programme is not implemented immediately, especially during the garden’s first three years of life.

It is essential that maintenance is carried out by professional gardeners. For gardens serving hospitality facilities or large private estates, we can also work alongside and train existing staff (who are often caretakers handling gardening tasks). We educate them on the specific needs of the garden, empowering the property owners to manage it completely independently by the end of the process.

Aprus creates a tailored maintenance programme for every garden we design, supported by our own team of gardeners and agronomists. We handle crucial early-stage operations to shape and establish the plants through proper pruning and fertilizing—essential during the initial years. We also provide phytosanitary monitoring (pest and disease control) and apply necessary treatments, guaranteeing the replacement of any plants that do not survive within the first vegetative cycle following planting.