Spring 2025 - Our office is currently closed for winter and will reopen March 2025
Ready, Set, Design
​The introduction of 3D design has surpassed the quality of flat drawings, by broadening the visual scope. Our designers showcase their work with incredible foliage and flower detail, creating it within a setting that replicates the client's home and landscape to perfect scale. This provides the client the ability to visualize their new landscape. ​

Waking Up To Spring
​Although still chilly and too wet, it's the perfect time to starting thinking about your new landscape design and installation for the 2025 season. It's also when the birds and other wildlife start appearing again, reminding us about our connection to a larger world. This year is the perfect time to create a yard that's irresistible to pollinators, pump-up and amend poor soils and install plants suitable to Illinois soil. Our designers will wow your neighbors with plants that have supersized returns such as larger blooms, a tendency to bloom two or three times a year, intense fragrance and bi or tri-color flowers. Our experienced staff selects plants that adapt to wild weather, smaller lots, changing lifestyles, and less free time, by designing and planting landscapes that are easier to care for. Here's what's on our radar for the new work season.

1. PLANT A YEAR-ROUND WILDLIFE HABITAT: Attracting wildlife to your garden year-round makes for a healthy, vibrant landscape. Our designers will create a design with plants you'll love for each of the four seasons!

2. ALL WHITE NOW: The clearest color trend is a more toned-down palette with a focus on calm and harmony, particularly shades of white from crisp to snowy, ivory to "dirty whites." With the here-to-stay emphasis on inside/outside lifestyle, colors on the garden continue to mirror those that are hot in the home sphere. Clean, fresh, optimistic - this color should be on everyone's watch list.

3. LOVE LILACS: Sweet-scented lilacs are budding up for a late spring display. Our growers have several varieties to provide blooms from late spring to mid-summer.

4. Lighting Innovations: Reports from the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) confirm the surge of interest in upgrading outdoor lighting to enhance the garden experience. New innovations such as brighter and more efficient LED bulbs controlled by mobile apps and the trend toward larger and more individualized outdoor spaces are spurring sales of outdoor lighting. Our designers at Acorn Design Group will choose areas to light such as architectural features, wall-washers to emphasize the effect of climbing clematis vines, foundation plantings and specimen plantings.

5. Mini-Me: Compact without compromise  Our designers, mindful of using space wisely and once and forever in love with containers, are turning to compact and dwarf versions of beloved plants which have been bred to have the same winning characteristics - flowers size, bloom cycle, culture and habit- but more in manageable form.

6. Geometric Shapes: Right angle planting beds have replaced wide sweeping, undulating beds for some homeowners. The geometric shape trend has been holding steady for a while now and doesn't appear to be slowing down. What has changed is the expansion beyond sculpted plants such as sheared topiaries, to garden beds in geometric forms with plenty of right angles.

7. Custom outdoor kitchens, fireplaces & Fire Pits: for the past several years, homeowners are choosing to spend more time outdoors. Our team of talented and experienced stone masons will install beautifully constructed brick and stone features to suit every home and lifestyle. For some, it is creating a functional and beautiful space that allows them to connect to family and friends. For others, it’s about developing a calming sanctuary to relax and unwind.”