Blue Hibiscus Gardens

We are very, very happy with our landscaping project and our interactions with Blue Hibiscus Gardens. We had an excellent working relationship with Gün, (the owner/designer) with whom we participated at every step. We reviewed plans, her suggested plantings, and made decisions together. Honestly, we had such complete confidence in her work that we had very few changes to her design. However, when we did, she was very open to our ideas and worked with us to include them. The work included hardscape, landscape, and a pergola. In the back yard, the new flagstone was very successfully integrated with existing flagstone, because of Gün's attention to detail in the design. Our front and back yards have been transformed into a beautifully-designed and inviting area.

Gun did a fabulous job designing our new landscaping. She was attentive to our somewhat unusual requests, and the end result is terrific.

Gun did a fantastic job with our front and backyard design from start to finish. We did not have much knowledge or experience with landscaping but just had general ideas and some photos of what we liked. She brought our ideas to fruition! We now have gorgeous, functional, modern landscaping and hardscaping. Gun is creative, responsive, and professional in all aspects of her services.

It was easy to gain confidence in Gun's ability as a landscape designer. Her knowledge of plants and attention to detail is impressive. Gun works efficiently and is committed to creating your vision. She closely monitored the project as the contractor, Zazueta Landscape, completed the project. I am extremely pleased with how my backyard. Gun has help me create a place of beauty and peace.

Gun did the landscape design for our yard. She provided timely renderings and layout information, and was flexible with our requests and budget. The design itself focused on maintaining the unique house's style, while focusing on a fair number of California natives and a lot of space for gardening -- including a bunch of fruit trees. Advice: 5/5 -- excellent pointers on how to take care of various types of plants. Design detail: 5/5 -- Gun is very good with software, and provided high quality renderings for each iteration of the design. Billing: 5/5 -- billing was easy and well-communicated, as was the contract itself. Every cost was quite clear. Style: 5/5 -- we love the design. We may come back and add more detail as we see how the plants and garden progress over the next few months.

Gun is amazing to work with. We worked with Gun for our backyard landscaping after a huge house expansion project. Our yard was basically full of construction trash, muds, and weeds - but Gun saw through all that and gave us a beautiful design that incorporated all of our random ideas and plans for the yard. We had pretty specific requests like fitting a large lawn for our big dog, a sports court, veggie garden, sitting areas, and storage space - and Gun pulled all that together into a cohesive design that worked for all aspects, taking into consideration sun position, sight lines, and flow of the space. We literally looked at the first draft of the design and were like "well, I guess she nailed it on the first try!" Gun's extensive knowledge of plants was one of the primary reasons we hired her. She gave us great recommendations for our request of "functional" plants, and even considered how our neighbors' trees overhanging the fence might affect our garden plans. Most importantly, she carefully considered the best placement for each plant based on the sun that we get in the yard and the amount of water each plant will need. I highly recommend Gun - just have one conversation with her and you'll know that she's the real deal! She responded quickly to all my random emails (even late at night!) and listened carefully to our questions and ideas. She's a fountain of knowledge and you won't find anyone better!

Gun did a wonderful job with my front yard design. She is very knowledgeable and so willing to answer questions. There are so many types of plants out there and she helped narrow down some plants for me to look at and think about. I am not a gardener so we planned for low maintenance and low water plants. She was present on planting day to map out where all of the plants should go. And her professional relationship with the landscaper company is another positive. Her knowledge, professionalism, and patience helped me achieve this amazing yard that my family and friends are enjoying very much. We have been getting so many compliments from neighbors and strangers.

Gun was incredible to work with. The end product is gorgeous and we will continue to take advantage of Gun's expertise as the garden matures. Gun is the very rare designer that combines professional expertise with an ability to listen and deliver what her customer wants. I think most designers have a style or two they are able to deliver that they personally like. Gun is unique in that she will take whatever style or vision you have in mind, then elevate and perfect it. She will work very hard to make what you envision work, but will also not be shy in telling you, hey, you have no shade in your garden so these shade plants aren't really going to work. Gun took me to the nursery to get an understanding of what I liked. She also looked at my pinterest. With that understanding she made a beautiful plan in 2D and 3D. She then made several alterations to that plan to get it perfect. She was very open to those changes and to collaborating. She also did a great job in the execution. She handled ordering all the plants, supervised their installation, and was very watchful of our contractor to make sure things were installed properly. We love our garden and are so happy with it! Thank you Gun!

Gun was a pleasure to work with - so knowledgeable, flexible, and practical with her suggestions. We knew little about gardening, but she made us feel confident in our choices, held our hands every step of the way. We started out with an unusable space. Now we have several entertaining areas, vegetable gardens, and a hot tub/place to relax. We love our new yard!

We really enjoyed working with Gun. Her 3D renderings gave us a great view of not only what we were envisioning but also some ideas that we could ponder. She helped us use our existing concrete patio and retaining wall and developed a design that we are really happy with. We have a great low water garden and are enjoying blooms all year long. She is very knowledgeable regarding native plants and worked around out desire to retain some of our plants. She was easy to work with, was available for questions and gave quick responses. She was flexible when we decided to add some plants to our front yard. She worked well with our landscaper and he noted that he usually works off his own designs. However, he worked well with her and they have since worked on other projects together. I would recommend Gun and would gladly work with her in the future.

Gun did a fabulous job designing, facilitating meetings with the client and myself, and following through diligently on all details that arose throughout the course of the project. The end results speak for themselves as it is a beautiful and clearly well-designed project. I hope I get more opportunities to work with Gun in the future!

We had recently used Blue Hibiscus Gardens for redesigning our backyard as well as frontyard and I have had the most pleasurable experience. Gun’s designs perfectly captured what I had in mind and much more. Her design drafts and concepts are very thorough. Her attention to detail clearly shows her passion. She is extremely responsive and offered multiple options for consideration. She is a storehouse of knowledge on plants - I wanted low water, drought tolerant plants attractive to bees/butterflies. She was also easily able to repurpose what I already had. We are delighted with her choice of bamboo in the backyard and espalier trees in my sideyard to utilize space. The yard work completed last month - I get immense joy tinkering around the garden and my family spends a lot of time there as well. We highly recommend her for any scale of projects.

Gun at Blue Hibiscus Gardens was wonderful to work with. She and I met several times to go over our space and plan out what we wanted. A lot of the plants we had on our property were removed due to construction and she took at look at what we had and came up with a proposal that met what we were looking for, addressed some issues that she raised when reviewing the property, and found some exciting and exotic plants to all a real kick to our yard. Her 3d renderings of the property helped us clearly see how the project would turn out from many different angles. She went above and beyond by interviewing landscaping companies for us, collecting bids, and working with our chosen vendor through the planting and installation process. It has now been several months since the work was completed. She stopped by a few times to check on the progress of the plants, and sent recommendations on how to keep the plants healthy and striving. Now my backyard is such a relaxing place to restore ourselves on the weekend, and it is all thanks to Gun's work!

Gun Unsal from Blue Hibiscus is fantastic! After a long remodel project, our yard had been reduced to nothing but gangly trees and a few scraggly plants, and it was in need of a complete overhaul. I am handy in the garden and had a vision for what I wanted as we brought it back to life. Gun’s expertise in hardscaping, plants, and trees brought this vision to life. I initially contacted Gun via email, and she responded almost immediately by calling to discuss an overview of our project and to set up a time to meet in person to see our yard. Her responsive and communicative approach lasted throughout the duration of our project (a breath of fresh air after working with slow or non-responsive contractors for a year!). Before we met, she had me answer some questions in writing so I could assess my landscaping goals (aesthetically and financially) and so she would understand what those goals were. When we met, she had used this information to provide me with a realistic description of the scope and type of work that could be achieved. Within a very quick time frame of our initial meeting, she created a digitized layout of a landscaping plan. The initial plan was awesome, as it addressed all of the parameters of the project that I had hoped would be incorporated. These included having a relaxed but slightly Zen feel in our shady backyard, installing low water plants in our sunny front yard, creating a visually pleasing but functional walkway to our front porch, removing old stone from a patio pad and replacing with bluestone, building a deck around an existing fire pit, and incorporating several Japanese maples and a crepe myrtle into the garden that I had been tending to in pots for several years. We met a few times and worked to tweak the plan a bit, and very quickly we had a finalized landscape plan. Gun had a list of several contractors that she recommended for the project, and helped us to contact them so they could come out to our property and provide a bid. We selected a contractor for the project that was recommended by Gun. I was very involved in the installation of the project, and Gun helped us to manage aspects of the project that were outside of my range of expertise but well within hers. Our garden has been installed for a little under a year now, and we couldn’t be happier with the outcome. Our hardscaping is perfect and has made our yard so much more user friendly than it was previously. Our plants are healthy, beautiful, and thriving in the yard. I can’t say enough about Gun, her working knowledge of all things plants, and the professional manner with which she approaches her work. I highly recommend her for your garden project!

We hired Gun to design our front and side yard (on a corner lot). We had removed our juniper landscaping and wanted a fresh new design. We told her we wanted a drought tolerant landscape and an 'interesting yard' and she did not disappoint! We worked with her to identify plants that we liked and those that we didn't. She came up with an amazing design, with several mounds as well as a flagstone seating area and dry creek bed. What we loved most is how thorough and detailed she is. We told her we were doing the planting ourselves and she provided us with so much detail (nurseries, rockeries, a link to a landscaper in case we needed help, a link to benches she suggested or stepping stones) as well as a detailed irrigation plan, amount of bark mulch and rocks to buy, link to videos on 'how to install the creek bed and flagstone seating area. She also suggested we wait until the fall to plant since the summer weather is so hot. Gun gave us a beautiful landscape plan ; she is very pleasant to work with, extremely knowledgeable and we highly recommend her for any landscape project.

Gun was a real pleasure to work with. She listened very carefully to our half-formed ideas, made sure she understood what we wanted and liked, as well as what we didn't want and didn't like. We are delighted with the results! She transformed our somewhat neglected front yard into a lovely low-water garden. She skillfully guided us through every step, from initial consultation, design, contractor selection, installation and plans for on-going maintenance. Any questions/issues were quickly resolved. We highly recommend Blue Hibiscus Gardens.