LBP: Karyne Barnum – Landscape Designer

My good friend and colleague Karyne Barnum is our Local Business Profile (or LBP) this week, and as a landscape designer with a background in biology, it’s her job to build you the garden sanctuary of your dreams. So, we are going all in for Spring! Get your hands dirty, play in the dirt and feel good – feel good daily when you get to see and smell those beautiful blooms pop up to create a backdrop of color. 

An Interview with: 

Karyne Barnum Headshot

Karyne Barnum

Landscape Designer

Karyne Barnum Landscape Design

I first met Karyne through a business group I have been involved in for 3 years now, and we became quick friends. Karyne’s creativity and drive to create her clients dream garden, with careful direction drew me to her immediately. Sitting down with Karyne for this interview however, I wanted to know more about how she became the type of designer who gets to play with flowers and dig in the soil.

After studying Biology as her major because she originally wanted to go into the pharmaceutical field , she decided to try her hand at studying Horticulture and early on, she thought she wanted to get involved with GMO’s or within the agricultural field. “I decided I wasn’t a health care bio person, I am a plant bio kind of person…from there I went back to school for horticulture/agriculture and I fell in love with all the classes. I still was unsure what I wanted to do at that point, but then one of my teachers [continued to ask me to] take one of their design courses. I finally agreed and completely fell in love with it.” 

Lounge area with water feature

This business seemed to be a natural fit for Karyne, with her love of biology and having grown up with her mom who is an artist and her dad who is a contractor. Landscape design seemed like the perfect melding of the environments she grew up understanding and the biology she loved studying. “I get to do construction, I get to do art and I get to do it all with plants, so this is really a molding of my upbringing, you could say.”

“I get to do construction, I get to do art and I get to do it all with plants”

Next I wanted to know how she got started in opening her own business for this incredible melding of her passions, and her experience of commercially constructing gardens actually began while still in school. When people would call into the horticulture department at her school, looking for someone to help with garden design, Karyne’s teacher would always give them her contact information. It started with little projects here and there and then developed into something more. “Then it turned into my mom’s friends wanting design, my neighbors, then the clients who had the little projects’ neighbors would inquire – and that’s when I knew I needed to begin doing this.”

Beautiful modern floating water feature

Karyne interned with a contractor for about a year and learned the fundamentals of how to help clients build their dream yard through watching the interactions and suggestions the contractor would make. “I was able to watch her process – how she would implement from design into the project, and I got to see how a professional would do it, so I learned a lot” 

 

Having been in the field now for 6 years and working with plants for over 10 years, Karyne is incredibly knowledgeable not only about plants but also the health benefits of working in the garden, what different types of soil mean for your plants and what types of plants will thrive in the specific soil you have. 

Floating benches around the glass lined firepit for outdoor entertaining.

I wanted to know more about her projects though, I started by asking about her favorite project so far, which was actually a difficult question for her to answer. “There are so many different designs and styles you can do and there are 2 projects I did within the last year that have been some of my favorite projects because they really made me expand out of my norm and I wouldn’t say, ‘expand out of my comfort zone’ because I’m really comfortable in doing things that are sort of odd ball and finding the weirdness and the amazingness out of the weirdness…”

Karyne went on to tell me about these 2 gardens and how they were both incredibly unique in their own way. 

“One garden that was super modern, super sleek, we only put about 6 types of plants in the whole landscape. In one corner, is a field of grasses, but its all the same grass, and then the backdrop to the landscape is all the same plant. So it was very unique. Along the side of the house was a whole row of the same plant, and for me, that was something that is very different than what I have done before, so a lot of time and energy went into designing that project.” 

The second project Karyne described sounded like something right out of a movie, with every plant in the garden being white! 

“I am doing another project right now, that is going in, and it’s an all white garden. So that was another one that made me really expand out of what I have done before, so I had to play off of the leaf color which I think I have always been good at.” Karyne explained that playing off of leaf color helps to create a colorful garden even when flowers aren’t in bloom. The leaf color creates dimension and depth.

With the white only garden though, there was also working with what happened when the flowers were in bloom, since they were all the same color. “So with this garden I also had to play off [of size of blooms] by putting really big peony flowers behind little tiny daisy flowers, so you really get the contrast and depth from the flower shape and not from the color difference” She also explained that adding flowers that appeared to be white from afar but had the tiniest bit of color were expanded into the back of the garden and also flowers that featured prominent stamens added interest into this all white bloom yard.

Karyne is always listening to her clients though and designs morph over time, as with this garden, where it started out being a pure white only garden, upon install, the client decided that some black flowers as well as light apricot and light purples would look alright mixed in. Of course, Karyne was able to implement these into her design even at the point of install. 

Large modern lawn stepping stones lead to a glass bottomed firepit.

When I asked about what her most challenging project has been she explained that while the two she had just described were her favorites, they were also some of the most challenging she has done. Karyne explained that as a designer it’s all about change “needing to adapt into whatever [the client’s] style is and what’s beautiful to their eye.” To achieve this, Karyne has multiple meetings with her clients, sometimes up to 6 meetings that last roughly 2 hours each, but as she explained these meeting fly by. “During this time I am picking their brain, showing them examples and really pulling out what is attractive to their eye, to get their style” 

Karyne really loves working with really stylized gardens, super extreme modern gardens, and cottage gardens. 

Cottage gardens are very densely planted gardens with lots of plants, however they are challenging because it is a fine balance, since you don’t want to have a garden that is too packed full of plants. This is when Karyne explained how she designs. “I first start with the bones [of the garden], big shrubs, trees, sort of foundation plants, plants that will be there all year round and I fill those in all over the garden. Then, if someone wanted a cottage garden, for maintenance reasons as well, I will maybe out of the front yard take only 3 areas that will have this lush sort of plant. So maybe in the front a plant peeks through the fence, then in front of the door and then on the pathway, and in these three areas I would just focalize just lush lush lush flower plantings where you get thick beautiful nice pops of color, and then sprinkle it everywhere else throughout the yard.”

This type of garden is easy to build, but a bit more difficult to maintain because most of these lush plants die off in the winter, which is really where, as Karyne explained, the bones of the garden really come into play.

Education of how gardens are maintained is a key thing for Karyne as well. Even low maintenance gardens still require maintenance. For instance, when you remove a lawn, for the next few years, lawn is going to try to come back. It is important to Karyne that her clients know what is going to happen in their garden before it happens, so they are prepared. 

Clean designs with rock features behind the pool deck

Hardscape is a big part of this as well. This includes Pathways, outdoor kitchens, water features, and firepits. While she began with plants, hardscapes are huge part of her designs right now and something she is incredibly in love with in her designs. While there are plants that create the bones of the garden, the hardscapes are really the barebones, which is why she loves implementing them into her designs. “Say you want a cottage garden and you have really clean lines for your hardscape lines, you can get looser in the plantings and the garden will still look clean, [but in contrast] if you have a whimsical trail and whimsical plants, it doesn’t really work, unless you’re constantly on top of it.” 

Beginning from a hardscape plan or redesign of hardscape and moving into landscape is really a favorite for Karyne because you can completely change what a backyard looks like and feels like. 

“There are a lot of things you can do to really change structure that a lot of people don’t think about, and a lot of that is in the hardscape”

We discussed that the one thing that clients should do, that sometimes gets overlooked would be the finishing touches. Karyne explained that the lighting and other final touches are so important. “So much of landscape design is creating a room or little sanctuary that the [client] can go out to and be out there and feel a sense of ‘ahhh'” Karyne went on to explain that the way she uses her garden is mainly in the evening and “adding lighting into the landscape is really the icing on the cake. A lot of people don’t realize how intimate lighting, firepits and water features can make the yard, because it adds a different type of life to the garden”

Ultimately, it’s about creating a space that feels like an extension of your home, that creates a feeling of serenity. To do this Karyne suggested creating walls with features implemented and creating spaces above you to extend your home outside into the garden. It’s also important to know where you spend most of your time in your home and what type of view you have of your garden, so that you can have key focal points outside that are seen from inside. 

To wrap up Karyne explained that clients should know the importance of color, textures, plant heights, leaf colors and patterns, and how important soils are. “For me, when I start a design, I go in and do a site analysis. I look at drainage, I look at lighting, I look at soils and different types of patterns within the landscape because there are some plants that thrive in clay soil and some that do well in clumpy soils. There are some plants that will do great in clay but only if they are on a hillside, where if they were in flat and clay they won’t do good.” 

Karyne always tells her clients this golden rule “You want to plant a fifty cent plant into a five dollar hole” 

If you are looking for a knowledgeable landscape designer who wants to make your garden dreams come true, I highly suggest Karyne Barnum. 

 

Find out more about Karyne at www.karynedesigns.com or www.facebook.com/karynesgarden/

Call her at 925.595.5811 or email her at karyne.design@gmail.com