PROCUREMENT & PLANTING
The Right Plant, in the Right Place, from the Right Source.
EHS horticulturists select, source, and install plant material for your property’s specific soils, exposures, and the lushness the landscape is capable of, not for what happened to arrive at the nursery this week.
Chester County, the Brandywine Valley, and Delaware are not generic growing environments. The soils along the Brandywine differ from the soils on the Main Line. A shaded garden next to a salt marsh in Lewes behaves differently than a shaded garden in a new Kennett Square installation. A planting plan that doesn’t account for those specifics will show it within a season.
EHS’s approach to procurement and planting starts with the property itself: its microclimates, its soil, its history, and what the landscape is trying to become. From there, plant material is sourced from quality growers, selected by species and variety, and installed by the same horticulturists who designed the plan. They monitor establishment through the season, because the plant selection and the planting are their work to stand behind.
WHAT WE DO
From Selection Through Installation
Plant Procurement & Sourcing
EHS sources plant material from established regional growers who supply by species, variety, and grade, not from big-box garden centers or commodity nursery stock. For specimen trees, rare cultivars, or historically appropriate species, EHS has the sourcing relationships to find what the property actually needs.
Landscape Planting & Installation
Tree, shrub, and perennial installation across new design-build projects and standalone planting plans. Every installation is managed by EHS’s horticultural staff, who understand how a planting will perform over three seasons and plan for it from the start. Proper depth, proper spacing, proper soil amendment: the work that determines whether a planting looks right five years from now.
Perennial Border Design & Planting
A well-composed perennial border rewards the gardener for years, but it requires genuine knowledge of plant performance, seasonal sequence, and spatial relationships to get right from the outset. EHS’s gardeners, including alumni of Longwood Gardens’ two-year Professional Gardener Training Program, design and plant borders that look intentional through every season, not just in the peak of summer.
Native, Pollinator & Woodland Garden Installation
Native plantings and ecological gardens require a different kind of knowledge: an understanding of succession, of regional plant communities, and of how a naturalistic planting is managed rather than manicured. EHS installs native meadow, pollinator, and woodland garden projects that are ecologically considered and designed to belong to the specific landscape they’re planted in.
Seasonal Container & Annual Plantings
Seasonal container plantings, annual beds, and rotating seasonal interest installations. EHS designs container arrangements around the property’s color palette and architecture, and replaces them across the season so the property looks considered at every point in the year.
Replanting & Restoration Planting
Historic properties often require replanting as part of a larger restoration effort: clearing overgrown sections, sourcing period-appropriate or historically significant species, and reinstating the intent of an original garden design. EHS approaches restoration planting with the same care it brings to masonry restoration: working from the evidence of what was there, and restoring what belongs.
Also of interest
Planting and procurement connect directly to how your landscape is maintained. See how EHS’s horticultural maintenance program extends the investment once the work is in the ground.
