Soil + Ink Landscape Design

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Soil + Ink Landscape Design

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Custom landscape designs that reflect your unique vision & values while promoting biodiversity.

10/26/2026

Nothing says unimaginative like yellow daylilies.

In certain cookie cutter neighborhoods, you will find the standard lamppost next to the driveway surrounded by yellow daylilies, namely, Stella d'Oros.

They're far from the only offender.... Plenty of other plants say "this landscaper made no effort." In most neighborhoods you will find combinations of the same three or four shrubs in a straight line across the front of the foundation.

Landscapers use bullit-proof plants to ensure survival when a home has no owner yet, or they don't want to count on the new homeowner to care for their plants (avoiding warranty replacement). These plants can grow anywhere in almost any conditions, nearly anywhere across the country. They are almost never native, do not serve any ecologically positive purpose, and are aesthetically homogeneous.

Soil + Ink believes a landscape should express a homeowner's personality and aesthetic while positively impacting the environment.

❓What are the "builder-grade" plants in your neighborhood? Let me know in the comments!

🟣 What can Soil + Ink do for you this season?

🟢 Soil + Ink Landscape Design: Elevate your outdoor space with our custom landscape designs that reflect your unique vision, values, and desire for a more vibrant, sustainable future.

Serving Cumberland, Dauphin, Adams, Perry, and Franklin counties.

🌿

10/26/2026

Nothing says unimaginative like yellow daylilies. They're not the only offender.... Plenty of other plants say "this landscaper made no effort."

In certain cookie cutter neighborhoods, you will find the standard lamppost next to the driveway surrounded by yellow daylilies, namely, Stella d'Oros. In most, you will find combinations of the same three or four shrubs in a straight line across the front of the foundation.

Landscapers use bullit-proof plants to ensure survival when a home has no owner yet, or they don't want to count on the new homeowner to care for their plants (avoiding warranty replacement). These plants can grow anywhere in almost any conditions, nearly anywhere across the country. They are almost never native, do not serve any ecologically positive purpose, and are aesthetically homogeneous.

Soil + Ink believes a landscape should express a homeowner's personality and aesthetic while positively impacting the environment.

❓What are the "builder-grade" plants in your neighborhood? Let me know in the comments!

🟣 What can Soil + Ink do for you this season?

🟢 Soil + Ink Landscape Design: Elevate your outdoor space with our custom landscape designs that reflect your unique vision, values, and desire for a more vibrant, sustainable future.

Serving Cumberland, Dauphin, Adams, Perry, and Franklin counties.

🌿

10/23/2026

🌿 Design delivery day! 🌿

I actually got to deliver this design last week and forgot to post!

For this client we are reshaping existing garden beds and expanding the garden around the newly defined backyard lawn.

We're using a combination of native and non-native plants flowering in shades of white, pink, and purple. The goal is a fully cohesive, interesting landscape that is all tied together and complements the home.

A trellis will be added over the garage for a climbing vine such as a clematis. New stone paths provide connectivity between the front porch and back deck. A totally new garden bed will be installed along the length of the "boring" side of the home for more interest from the street view. Trees are strategically placed to provide privacy, shade, new focal points, and screening from power lines and the neighbors ugly shed.

🟣 What can Soil + Ink do for you this season?

🟢 Soil + Ink Landscape Design: Elevate your outdoor space with our custom landscape designs that reflect your unique vision, values, and desire for a more vibrant, sustainable future.

Serving Cumberland, Dauphin, Adams, Perry, and Franklin counties.

🌿

Made w/ Morpholio Trace
and PlantMaster

10/21/2026

I've received several questions regarding setting up my title block, so I thought I would share a quick video of how I do that. I simply make a duplicate of this file when I start a new project.

🟣 What can Soil + Ink do for you this season?

🟢 Soil + Ink Landscape Design: Elevate your outdoor space with our custom landscape designs that reflect your unique vision, values, and desire for a more vibrant, sustainable future.

Serving Cumberland, Dauphin, Adams, Perry, and Franklin counties.

Made w/ Morpholio Trace

In this video I demonstrate the library of rendered plants that I am starting to create, which can be used in a new drawing so I don't have to start from scratch every time. I'm creating one layer for shrubs and another layer for perennials and grasses. This can either be copied from this drawing file into your current project drawing file, or you could save these layers as individual photo files to be imported directly into your new drawing.

🟣 What can Soil + Ink do for you this season?

🟢 Soil + Ink Landscape Design: Elevate your outdoor space with our custom landscape designs that reflect your unique vision, values, and desire for a more vibrant, sustainable future.

Serving Cumberland, Dauphin, Adams, Perry, and Franklin counties.

Made w/ Morpholio Trace

Finally, in this video I share my most commonly used color palette, based on the recommendations of a course I took on landscaping wrenching with markers. There are lots of color palettes available for purchase on Etsy as well.

🟣 What can Soil + Ink do for you this season?

🟢 Soil + Ink Landscape Design: Elevate your outdoor space with our custom landscape designs that reflect your unique vision, values, and desire for a more vibrant, sustainable future.

Serving Cumberland, Dauphin, Adams, Perry, and Franklin counties.

Made w/ Morpholio Trace

Awkward office video setup!

Hopefully you were also able to ignore the paint on my fingers and the sniffling from my allergies in the videos!

🟣 What can Soil + Ink do for you this season?

🟢 Soil + Ink Landscape Design: Elevate your outdoor space with our custom landscape desig

10/05/2026

Fall in the Log Wave Garden!

🟣 What can Soil + Ink do for you this season?

🟢 Soil + Ink Landscape Design: Elevate your outdoor space with our custom landscape designs that reflect your unique vision, values, and desire for a more vibrant, sustainable future.

Serving Cumberland, Dauphin, Adams, Perry, and Franklin counties.

🌿 | ecologymatters | landscapedesign | Harrisburg | asters | little bluestem

10/01/2026

This one is all wrapped up and sent to the printer as of yesterday! Hoping to present the final product to my homeowner soon!

🍂Fall and winter are a great time to plan next year's landscape project. Actually, it's the best time!

If you wait until spring to call your designer or landscape crew, they will likely be already booked up. Besides, great design and collaboration takes time and thoughtfulness; you don't want something thrown together in just a few days.

Bonus points if I get to come measure your property before it gets cold and snowy!

🟣 What can Soil + Ink do for you this season?

🟢 Soil + Ink Landscape Design: Elevate your outdoor space with our custom landscape designs that reflect your unique vision, values, and desire for a more vibrant, sustainable future.

Serving Cumberland, Dauphin, Adams, Perry, and Franklin counties.

🌿

09/29/2026

You would never settle for builder-grade finishes inside your home.

You chose the countertops. You agonized over the paint color. You picked the light fixtures.

So why should your landscape be any different?

That straight row of identical shrubs may have met the builder’s requirements or satisfied the HOA—but your landscape can do so much more.

We’re not saying your landscaping needs to cause a neighborhood scandal…
but it could be a lot more interesting.

Your home’s exterior is the first impression. Thoughtful landscape design can transform that space into an extension of your home and your personal style—beautiful, welcoming, functional, and uniquely yours.

Ready to give your landscape the attention it deserves? Let’s design something worth talking about.

🟣 What can Soil + Ink do for you this season?

🟢 Soil + Ink Landscape Design: Elevate your outdoor space with our custom landscape designs that reflect your unique vision, values, and desire for a more vibrant, sustainable future.

Serving Cumberland, Dauphin, Adams, Perry, and Franklin counties.

🌿

09/27/2026

Colors of fall!

🟣 What can Soil + Ink do for you this season?

🟢 Soil + Ink Landscape Design: Elevate your outdoor space with our custom landscape designs that reflect your unique vision, values, and desire for a more vibrant, sustainable future.

Serving Cumberland, Dauphin, Adams, Perry, and Franklin counties.

🌿

09/23/2026

The meadow is unpredictably different every single year.

At the moment the asters are starting to shine, and the goldenrod don't seem to want to make an appearance. Who knows how much the combination of my own May Chelsea chop & this year's rain patterns have affected it.

Definitely going to chop more next year, and may experiment with some mid-season simulated "grazing" of the tall grasses that are flopping open this year.

Do you have an expensive space that could possibly be converted into a meadow? I used to get a lot of requests for these, but it's been quite a while since I received one.

🟣 What can Soil + Ink do for you this season?

🟢 Soil + Ink Landscape Design: Elevate your outdoor space with our custom landscape designs that reflect your unique vision, values, and desire for a more vibrant, sustainable future.

Serving Cumberland, Dauphin, Adams, Perry, and Franklin counties.

🌿

08/13/2026

Anybody know if you can Chelsea chop euphorbia corollata / flowering spurge?

A wonderful whimsical punch of white in the middle of summer! I love her, but she's a little tiny bit unruly.

🟢 Soil + Ink Landscape Design: Elevate your outdoor space with our custom landscape designs that reflect your unique vision, values, and desire for a more vibrant, sustainable future.

Serving Cumberland, Dauphin, Adams, Perry, and Franklin counties.

🌿

Address

Carlisle, PA

Website

http://www.soilandink.co/

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