Luxury Landscapes Are Becoming the Next Test of High-End Design
Written by Ethan M. Stone
Americans spent roughly $603 million remodelling their homes in a single year, according to the National Association of REALTORS. At the same time, luxury real estate is spending heavily on the spaces outside the front door. The shift is visible in the latest outdoor-design data. Yardzen saw a 23% increase in requests for native planting, pollinator gardens, and climate-adapted species, while traditional lawn area fell 25%, as reported by Forbes.
The change reflects a larger transformation of what luxury entails at home. According to Forbes, 25% of homeowners undertaking outdoor renovations were motivated by making their spaces more accommodating, an increase from previous years, which suggests that gardens are increasingly being designed around lived experiences.
Curb appeal often draws buyers before a single door opens. Realtor.com states that outdoor extensions make the biggest difference in how “livable” a home feels. Yet luxury landscaping still carries an old contradiction: millions can be invested in architecture and interiors while the land surrounding them is approached as a finishing exercise. Flowering shrubs get chosen because they look good in a nursery pot, hedges get planted for symmetry, and outdoor rooms get bolted onto a house instead of grown from its architecture. The plants may thrive for a season. The design rarely does.
Geoffrey Nimmer believes that mindset leaves one of the most dynamic parts of a property underdesigned. A garden has to respond to the architecture, the site, and the people moving through it, he argues, because its character changes with every season.
Nimmer recalls reading a book where landscape design was referred to as “the slowest of the performing arts.” The phrase captures an essential difference between a garden and the finished surfaces inside a home. Time, he adds, is part of the medium. A tree may take years to establish its scale. Planting changes with the weather and age, and the experience of a path depends on the body moving through it. According to Nimmer, those qualities make the landscape closer to choreography than construction.
This informs Geoffrey Nimmer Landscapes, the Hamptons-based practice Nimmer has led for roughly 25 years. His perspective was shaped partly by his earlier career as a professional modern dancer, an experience that taught him to consider how space is organized and experienced. “Both dance and landscape design are physical; they’re both creative, and they’re both about time and space,” he says. His work has been mentioned in Architectural Digest and The New York Times, while the practice’s projects span the east end of Long Island, New York.
Choreography, Nimmer explains, is fundamentally about making things happen in space. One choreographer he worked with never had her dancers physically touch; instead, she said she “touches the space.” Nimmer has carried that idea into landscape, thinking about how paths, plants, and open areas can alter the way people perceive and move through a property.
The approach begins with the property itself. Nimmer notes that the first question he asks clients is how they envision using their outdoor spaces. Plant selection follows the conditions of the site rather than the temporary appeal of a nursery display. “Flowers are fleeting,” he says, explaining his preference for plantings whose texture and structure remain compelling after a bloom has passed.
Preparation matters just as much. Nimmer recalls a gardening mentor’s rule: “a $5 hole for a 50-cent plant.” Healthy soil, he explains, gives plants the conditions they need to establish and thrive, a principle he sees as particularly important in developments where landscaping can otherwise be installed quickly for sale.
Ecological responsibility sits inside the design philosophy. Nimmer notes that he has promoted organic practices and native plants since the beginning of his career, while questioning the assumption that luxury requires immaculate lawns.
“To me, a perfect lawn has moss and clover in it,” he remarks, emphasizing a landscape where pollinators can benefit, and families can enjoy the organic grass without the pursuit of perfection dictating every decision.
In Nimmer’s view, the deepest measure of a successful garden is its capacity to keep changing. He tells clients that a landscape is never finished, viewing that uncompletion as the point. “A sapling becomes a mature tree; planting shifts, and a family experiences the property through successive stages of life,” he explains.
The landscape, in his view, should therefore reward patience. “The experiencing of the process is the single greatest thing I would love for people to get out of their gardens,” he says. Luxury, under this philosophy, should be measured partly by the privilege of watching a designed space acquire its own life. The finest landscape may make an impression on its first day, but its real value, he posits, emerges years later, as time turns the garden into something no installation schedule could ever fully predict.
