PortfolioLandscape architecture
Estate landscape design site for a practice since 1981
Peter Howe Design · Landscape architecture
A Loudoun County landscape practice needed a site that shows the full body of work—including gardens photographed decades ago—with the polish of their current photography, plus ongoing publishing, local SEO, and managed security so the studio can stay focused on the grounds.
- Web design
- Content
- Photo revitalization
- Local SEO
- Managed publishing
- Managed security
01 · Story
The story
Peter Howe Design is a family landscape practice established in 1981, now based in Round Hill and serving Loudoun County and nearby Northern Virginia. The work is stone, water, planting, and long-term care—gardens meant to look as if they have always belonged on the land.
The new site had to do more than look current. It had to present the full portfolio: signature estates, waterfalls, terraces, formal gardens, and outdoor rooms that prove four decades of craft. Many of the strongest project photos were taken ten, twenty, or thirty years ago—before the practice had a modern photography team—so the archive and the recent shoots did not sit at the same visual level.
We designed and built a marketing site that leads with that body of work, tells the practice story in plain language, and makes estate design and ongoing lawn care easy to inquire about. A central part of the engagement was bringing the older images to life so they read next to the modern portfolio instead of looking like a different era of the same firm.
Like our other local business sites, the engagement includes CMS-style publishing without handing the client a fragile blog admin: when content needs to ship, we deploy it. Optimized local SEO and managed security sit alongside the design so the site stays current and protected without the practice running a second IT job.
02 · Constraints
Challenges
- 01
Show the full portfolio, not a thin sample
The practice has a deep bench of completed grounds. Visitors needed to see the range—woodland edges, formal allees, pools, stonework, and garden structures—without a site that felt like a dump of unedited albums.
- 02
Decades of photos, one visual standard
Many project images were shot 10–30 years ago. The craftsmanship was real; the camera work and color were not at the level of today’s shoots. Leaving them raw would undercut the work. Dropping them would hide the practice’s history.
- 03
Presence of age, without looking dated
The brand is maturity and permanence—gardens with presence of age—not trendy landscape marketing. The site had to feel refined and current while honoring a practice that has been building for more than forty years.
03 · Delivery
What we did
- Designed a calm, high-end marketing site around the portfolio and practice story: selected work up front, capabilities, process, and clear paths to commission design or request lawn care
- Revitalized archive project photos so older images sit next to modern photography with consistent color, light, and finish—highlighting the craftsmanship instead of the age of the file
- Wrote plain-language project captions and service paths so owners understand stone, water, planting, and care without industry jargon
- Built on a modern stack with responsive layouts so the portfolio and inquiry paths hold up on phone and desktop
- Structured the site for local SEO in Loudoun and nearby markets, with managed content deploys instead of a self-serve CMS the team has to babysit
- Included managed security as part of the ongoing site offering so updates and hardening are not left as homework for the practice
04 · Results
Outcomes
- A live site that presents the full practice—archive and recent work—under one visual standard
- Older portfolio images that read as craft evidence, not as a lower-quality era of the brand
- Clear next steps for estate design commissions and ongoing grounds care in Loudoun and nearby counties
- A local business site model: we publish and deploy content, optimize local search, and manage security while they run the practice
Stack
Next
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