CF Green Designs

I reached out to Chiara at CF Green Designs to help us design a low maintenance, low water usage, modern design. Our chief complaint was our street corner house had tons of grass and was being used as a cut across for the local high school students. We wanted to have a design different from what was in our neighborhood so I drove Chiara around the neighborhood and we discussed things that worked and didn’t work for these houses. I wanted to create a front path from the street to the front door and I knew I also wanted to have a fountain by the front door. Over a series of visits, we cultivated a plan for design, plants and lighting. I am beyond thrilled with the overall design, which we were able to execute over the month of October (‘23)! Chiara was easy to work with, listened to our ideas and needs, and was very helpful with all of our questions and concerns. She had a list of contractors and places to shop so that I was able to manage my project with ease. We love our front yard and get compliments from everyone that walks by! Thank you Chiara!

We had such a positive experience working with Chiara on our front and backyard plans. She is responsive, detailed, and incorporated our 'wish list' into the plans. She is incredibly skilled and experienced in all aspects of the planning, plus she has a wonderful design aesthetic. She really helped guide our concept and provided lots of great options for contractors. We are so glad that we worked with her.

We worked with Chiara to transform our back and front yards. Chiara was an absolute pleasure to work with. She created 2-d and 3-d models for our project and was able to understand and incorporate all our requirements. In addition to landscape design work, Chiara worked with our contractor during the implementation phase and helped with selections (planters, rocks for the zen garden, plants from the nursery etc.). Thank you Chiara!

We worked with Chiara on a complete redesign of our sizable front and back yards. Our project is now done and it is the envy of our neighborhood and friends! She thought of every little detail. She is an expert at what she does. She is extremely patient, and yet knows how to set boundaries. She's a great listener. She has excellent taste and helped us with material choices, and guided us expertly away from impractical choices. She's also an expert in plants! But the most important reason we loved her is because she does not come in with an idea she wants to implement - she works with you to design what *you* want. We had a lot of requirements - low water usage, not too much hardscape, hot tub, sauna, keep the old kidney shaped pool but we want a modern look, we have two big dogs and they should have run of the place but we want it to look pretty(!). She really understood what we wanted and we now practically live in our backyard(and the dogs love it too)!

Chiara was a pleasure to work with. She created a beautiful design that was clean and modern, but still warm and inviting. She took all of our design and style ideas and put together something that suited us perfectly, and was incredibly responsive and easy to work with. The 3D models helped provide a sense of how everything would look, and she even gave us references for contractors and plant nurseries. We wound up using one of her contractor references (Brian Tran from All Pro Landscape), and he did a great job bringing Chiara's design to life.

We enjoyed working with Chiara for our landscape plans. Chiara had wonderful design ideas for our yard layout as well as excellent plant recommendations. We've received many compliments about the plants in our yard! Chiara is very professional, easy to work with, listens and incorporates our ideas. She showed us 3D pictures with a couple of scenarios to help us visualize how we would like the yard to look. After finalizing the design, she gave us a list of all the plants we choose which detailed how big the plants will get and watering requirements which is so helpful with plant maintenance. I would absolutely use Chiara again for any future landscaping projects!

My husband and I were referred to Chiara to help design our backyard landscaping project. She did an excellent job to incorporate both of our ideas into the design, and she gave us contacts to the contractors to turn the design into a beautiful, tranquil, and low maintenance park-like backyard. On top that, the contractor we used was fast, efficient, charged us reasonably, and did an excellent job. We now enjoy our backyard everyday.

So glad we found Chiara through Houzz. Her work matched our vision of our front and back yard landscape redesign. She was great to work with and quickly found a direction that transformed our space. She adapted her plans to our taste and easily accepted our change request. Through each revision she improved the design. Overall her specs are very detailed, she works fast and is easy to work with. She brings a good vision and sensibility to landscaping project while keeping her cost very reasonable. I highly recommend her for any landscape project you are looking to start.

We contacted Chiara to redesign our backyard. We wanted to remove the deck and lawn; and plant more CA natives and drought tolerant plants. Chiara was just awesome! She listened very patiently, came up with a great backyard design, made any changes that we requested. The final product looks really great. Chiara is really passionate about her work and very meticulous in her work. We would highly recommend her services.

We hired Chiara to design a complete remodel of our front and back yards. She listened well and understood our functional and aesthetic needs. She had great ideas and always provided great options for us to think through. She also thought of things we wouldn't have, so it was great to have her experience and expertise. We were able to apply for Santa Clara County's landscape conversion rebate and Chiara was able to work within the constraints and provide all the necessary documentation. Overall a pleasure to work with and we highly recommend!

The completion of any project, whether large or small, requires calmness, patience and tenacity. Often, such a project requires the presence and the irreplaceable cooperation of particularly committed people. I’ve had the fortune and possibility to work with Chiara, who embodies all of these characteristics, as well as a perfect professionalism, punctuality and availability. Chiara is able not only to perfectly satisfy one’s requests, but also to give useful advice on plants and on more technical aspects (e.g. how best to utilize the available space). As her point of reference, she always uses the location’s sobriety and its beauty which her projects simply extract and bring to life. Last (but not least), she is someone who puts you completely at ease without pressure of any kind. Give her a call and you’ll see what I mean!

Our project was a complete renovation of a California ranch-style home built in the early 1950s, located in the Rose Garden area of San Jose, CA. We went with a contemporary style for the interior and wanted to do all-new landscaping that was style-consistent with that for both the front and back yards, so we decided to hire a full-service landscape designer. We researched, contacted, and met with several candidates, then reviewed their proposals. In the end we chose Chiara. One of the primary reasons we chose Chiara was because she does her designs in full 3D, and can quickly generate 3D renders to help the client visualize what the design would actually look like. She can even take into account shadows from trees and the location of the sun at different times of day, which depends on the orientation of the house. The 3D visualization is very useful when trying to decide between different design options. There were several times where we had trouble deciding between options for a particular design element, and Chiara quickly created 3D renders for the different options that were immensely helpful in making a decision. Many landscape designers only do their designs in 2D, and it can often be quite difficult to visualize what a design will look like in reality from only an overhead 2D plan, so Chiara’s skillset definitely reduces anxiety and uncertainty, making the process easier for the client. Chiara’s fees were very reasonable, and we found that she offered a greater skillset and a fuller scope of service than many other so-called “high-end” landscape designers, who often charged more while offering less (such as no 3D visualization). Chiara was also consistently friendly, professional, punctual, and very responsive throughout the project. She was always very flexible in meeting with us, whether over Skype or in-person, and she was great with e-mail communications (responsive and detail-oriented). A lot of the how good an initial client-designer match is depends on taste, and is subjective. Part of why we chose Chiara was because we liked the style of designs she had done for previous clients, many of which are available to see on her website. They struck us as clean-looking, functional, and tasteful without being pretentious, with a modern or contemporary aesthetic. For our project, we were always very pleased with her initial design concepts, even if they ended up being modified or tweaked in some way later. We also appreciated that she offered clear opinions on design choices when we asked, but she was never pushy or dismissive of our personal preferences. Whenever we had concerns about something, whether it had to do with functionality or aesthetics, she always listened and took them to heart. In our opinion, a good designer needs to balance utilizing their own design experience and expertise about what works well and looks good vs. taking into account clients’ personal preferences, tastes, and typical usage scenarios for their lifestyle. At least for us, Chiara struck the perfect balance, and we are very happy with both the final product and how the design process went. Additionally, we decided during the design process to replace all of the front lawn with drought-tolerant plants, and Chiara was very helpful with guiding us through the process to apply for the rebate from the Santa Clara County Valley Water District. The rebate we will end up receiving should pretty much pay for Chiara’s services, and that is in no small part thanks to her hard work. Overall, Chiara exceeded our expectations and we would not hesitate to recommend to her to anyone in need of a landscape designer’s services.