Landscape Design Services in Cottonwood Heights, UT
Landscape Design in Cottonwood Heights
Cottonwood Heights lots hand a designer three things at once: serious slope, serious weather, and serious views. On the benches near Big and Little Cottonwood Canyons, a good design turns a steep, rocky back hill into usable terraces instead of an eroding weed bank, plans retaining walls as architecture rather than afterthoughts, and keeps sightlines open to the canyons that drew you here. It also has to survive the bench: roughly double the valley's snow load, canyon winds that shred fragile plants, a shorter growing season at elevation, and mule deer that eat anything tender. Hernandez Landscaping designs for these larger foothill properties with engineered terracing, wind-firm and deer-resistant planting palettes, and snow-shed zones built into the plan — so the landscape still looks right in February, not just July.
Local Challenges We Address
- Steep, rocky bench lots erode and shed water downhill, leaving backyards unusable without terracing and retaining structure.
- Mule deer browse ruthlessly near the canyon mouths — tulips, hostas, and arborvitae rarely survive their first season.
- Canyon winds and double snow loads snap brittle plants and crush foundation shrubs placed under rooflines.
- The shorter bench growing season means plant choices that thrive downhill can fail to establish at this elevation.
Local Tip: Walk your lot in midwinter before finalizing a design — note where roof avalanches land, where plow snow piles, and where drifts linger. In Cottonwood Heights those spots decide what survives, and the best designs treat them as gravel, stone, or hardy groundcover from day one.
What's Included
- 3D design renderings so you see the result before we start
- Water-wise plant selection using the Localscapes method
- Grading and drainage planning for valley clay and bench slopes
- Hardscape integration (patios, walkways, walls)
- Irrigation system design included with every plan
- Phased installation options to fit your budget
Quick Facts
- Price Range
- Landscape design in Cottonwood Heights runs $500 to $2,500, with steep bench lots needing terracing and drainage studies at the premium end of the range.
- Service Area
- Cottonwood Heights, UT
- Neighborhoods
- Old Mill area, Butlerville, Canyon-mouth benches
"Every other bid for our backyard slope was just a wall and a prayer. Hernandez Landscaping terraced it, planted deer-resistant natives, and set the irrigation up for the wind up here. Two winters of canyon snow later, everything is exactly where they put it."
Mark D.
Old Mill area, Cottonwood Heights
Landscape Design in Cottonwood Heights FAQs
Design fees in Cottonwood Heights run $500 to $2,500, and slope is the biggest variable. A planting and layout plan for a relatively flat lot sits near the middle of that range, while a steep bench property needing terracing studies, wall placement, drainage planning, and grading detail lands at the top. It is premium work for premium lots — but on a hillside, design is cheap insurance. A retaining wall placed wrong or a terrace drained badly costs many times the design fee to redo, and these lots rarely forgive guesswork.
We break the slope into levels with a purpose for each one. Terracing turns a grade you can barely walk into a patio level, a planting level, and often a play or garden level, connected by steps that follow the natural fall line. Retaining walls do the structural work, so we design them as features — boulder walls that echo the canyon, or block walls that match the home. Drainage is planned first, not last: every terrace needs somewhere for spring snowmelt to go that is not your neighbor's yard or your own foundation.
Near the canyon mouths, assume deer will sample everything once and return nightly for favorites. We build palettes around plants they reliably leave alone: catmint, Russian sage, salvia, yarrow, blue fescue, barberry, Oregon grape, and aromatic natives like big sagebrush and rabbitbrush. Daffodils replace tulips, which are deer candy. Nothing is truly deer-proof in a hard winter, so prized plants go inside fenced or walled zones close to the house, and the outer landscape is planted with things a hungry February mule deer still walks past.
Here, absolutely. The bench routinely catches double the snow of the valley floor, and a design that ignores it falls apart by March. We map where roofs shed their loads and keep woody shrubs out of those crush zones, using gravel bands or tough groundcovers instead. Driveway and walk layouts include planned snow storage areas so plows are not burying your planting beds in salted snow. Evergreens are placed to block canyon winds without shading winter walkways into ice sheets, and structures are specified for real snow loads.
Landscape Design in Nearby Areas
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