The spring garden is decided in September
Everyone believes the garden year begins in spring. Spring is when gardens are photographed. They are made in the fall, and if you want to be living in yours by May, the decision happens now.
Fine garden design · Nashville, Tennessee
Nashville and Middle Tennessee.
Studio on a working farm.
Featured in Country Living.
Land portraiture nationwide.
The studio
The Grass Girl is my garden and landscape design studio, creating gardens that change the way people experience home. I read a property across its seasons before I draw, design around the hours you actually live outside, and stay with the work through installation and the seasons after it.
Every client gets me. No team, no junior designer working from my notes.
As featured in
Country LivingLebanon City LifestyleThe Wilson PostStroll Belle MeadeGreen Matters
The trial beds on the farm, where everything is tested before it reaches a client’s ground
How I work
Good design is decided slowly and revealed quickly
Land tells you where things belong if you pay attention over time. I watch how water moves after a Tennessee downpour, where the light lands at the hours you are actually outside, and what is already thriving before anything is drawn. The design follows the ground rather than a mood board.
- Land PortraitureSustained presence with a property before a single line is drawn. The land tells you where things belong if you pay attention over time.
- Inhabitation DesignThe hour is the unit of design, not the bed. Every decision is anchored to a real moment in your day, from first coffee to after dark.
- Every client gets meNo team, no junior designer working from my notes. I walk your property, I sit at the drawing table, and the practice stays deliberately intimate.
The land studies you back
A Sylvan Park garden, designed for the hours it is actually lived in
The method
Land portraiture is the practice of sustained presence with a property: following the water, watching the light move from June to November, noticing what has already seeded itself without permission.
Inhabitation design is what I do with what I hear. The hour becomes the unit of design rather than the bed, so the garden is built around the moments you are really in it, from first coffee to after dark.
3
Years spent watching the farm before planting anything
7a–7b
The USDA zones every plan is drawn for
1
Designer on your property, start to finish
5
Middle Tennessee counties served from the studio
In her words
Notes from the studio and the farm
- Seasons
“In Tennessee, fall is the best planting season there is. Not a close second. The best.”
— Clare HorneFounder, The Grass GirlRead the note 
Ecology“Restoration implies an original state to return to. The past it reaches for is always invented.”
— Clare HorneFounder, The Grass GirlRead the note
Method“The first set of questions produces a beautiful garden. The second set produces a beautiful life. They are not the same thing.”
— Clare HorneFounder, The Grass GirlRead the note
The farm“The land had been talking the entire time. I just could not hear it over myself.”
— Clare HorneFounder, The Grass GirlRead the note
Process“I am composing while I am driving, while I am cooking dinner, while I am walking my own garden. By the time I sit down to sketch, I have already been designing.”
— Clare HorneFounder, The Grass GirlRead the note
