whole property commissions

A flash freeze moved through Middle Tennessee one winter and took almost everything with it.

I walked this property in early spring. The crape myrtles were bare sticks. The boxwood hedges had gone brown and brittle. The beds were black mulch and dead stems. The house was beautiful. The land around it looked like it had given up.

The clients needed much more than a few replacement plants. They needed someone to bring the whole property back to life.

That is a Whole Property Commission.

A Whole Property Commission is for a home where the entire exterior needs to come into relationship with itself. The arrival, the foundation planting, the outdoor living areas, the privacy, the circulation, the seasonal structure, all resolved together as a single cohesive design rather than a collection of separate decisions made at different times by different people.

Most whole property clients come to me with one of three situations.

A property that has been neglected, damaged, or planted without a vision and needs to be reimagined from the ground up.

A new build where the architecture is finished and the land has not caught up yet. The house is built, but the place has not arrived. The exterior is graded and seeded and waiting for someone to tell it what it wants to become.

An existing home that has been lived in for years, where the planting has grown past its original intent, the design has never been coherent, and the clients finally have the time and resources to do it properly.

All three have the same underlying question: what should this whole property be?

What the Work Involves

A Whole Property Commission begins the same way all my work begins. I walk the property and read it before I design it. I look at how light moves across the site at different hours, where water goes after rain, which views matter from inside the house, where the arrival sequence starts and how it ends, what the architecture is asking for, and what the land is already doing well that nobody has noticed yet.

I also look at the people. How they live. What they love. Whether the property feels like them or like whoever owned it before. A well-designed property has a point of view that belongs to the people inside it. It reflects something true about who they are. That is one of the most specific things design can do, and one of the things most properties never get.

From there I build a design that resolves the exterior as a whole. Every zone, every threshold, every sight line from the principal rooms, every seasonal consideration. The planting plan covers the full property. The material and hardscape recommendations connect the spaces. The design holds together as one composition rather than a series of improvements.

This is the commission for clients who want the house to finally feel finished. Who have driven past certain properties and felt something without being able to name it. Who are tired of the builder-grade answer. The boxwoods lined up at the foundation. The trio of nandinas by the garage. The two crape myrtles flanking the driveway. Done. And who know their property deserves something that actually belongs to them.

A well-designed property looks like nowhere else. Because nowhere else has the same people in it.

Whole Property Commissions are available throughout Nashville and Middle Tennessee, including Belle Meade, Green Hills, Brentwood, Franklin, Leiper's Fork, and surrounding areas.

For a defined outdoor space rather than the full property, see Garden Commissions. For farms, acreage, and estates, see Land Portraiture Commissions.