Mon–Thu 10am–5:30pm · Fri to 2pm (408) 655-2155
About the studio · Everett Avenue, Palo Alto

Slowly.

Skyecrofte is a one-room garden design studio. A plan here starts as pencil on trace, after a day on your ground with tape, laser and level, and it is finished only when a mason can build from it without ringing us.

Scale 1:50, drawn by hand
Turnaround five to six weeks, measure to folio
Billing one fee per project, by invoice
Hands drawing a garden plan in pencil on tracing paper at an oak drawing board
Pencil first, alwaysTrace, 2H lead, brass scale rule
How the studio began

A plan should come out of the plot, not a satellite image

Skyecrofte began with a small stubbornness. Too many garden plans arrived looking tidy and measuring wrong: a fence that wasn’t where the drawing put it, a slope that had been quietly flattened on paper. So we walk the ground ourselves.

The studio sits on Everett Avenue in Palo Alto, and most of our plots are within a short drive of it: corner lots, long thin yards, clay that holds water until March. Further afield we post a measuring sheet and talk you through it on video, and the drawings come out the same.

We draw; we don’t dig. That is deliberate. A designer who doesn’t pour the concrete has no reason to flatter it, and every sheet we hand over is dimensioned so that any good contractor can price it fairly.

  • Every dimension checked twice, once on site and once on paper
  • Plant lists written for this soil, this sun, this much summer water
On the drawing board

The kit that goes in the van, and why

  1. 01

    Fibreglass tape

    Thirty metres, paid out along each fence line. It doesn’t stretch, and it doesn’t lie about a crooked boundary.

  2. 02

    Laser and spirit level

    Finished-floor heights and falls recorded in millimetres, so the paving drains where the drawing says it does.

  3. 03

    2H pencil on trace

    The first draft is always graphite. A line you can rub out is a line you can think with.

  4. 04

    Brass scale rule

    One centimetre on the sheet is half a metre of your ground. Nothing is ever “roughly to scale”.

  5. 05

    Sun-hours log

    Morning, noon and four o’clock, noted on the day we visit, so the shade plants really get shade.

Five to six weeks, in order

What happens between the first call and the folio

Billed half at survey and half at delivery, by invoice. Nothing ticks by the hour while you think.

Week 0

The first call

You tell us what the plot does and what you’d never part with. We book a measure day.

Week 1

Measure day

Tape, laser and level on site, or a measuring sheet and a video call if you’re further afield.

Weeks 2–4

At the board

Base plan in pencil, then planting and stone. Your revision round lands in the middle.

Weeks 5–6

The folio

Final sheets, plant list and materials board, ready for a mason and a nursery to read.

A garden path of split basalt and thyme beside lavender and a dry-stone wall
What we hold to

Honest materials, honest scale

  • Provenance over novelty. We draw with stone that has a quarry, timber that has a past: hand-split basalt, reclaimed oak sleepers, salvaged common brick, lime mortar.
  • Plants that belong. Mediterranean-climate and California natives, chosen to settle in and ask little of the summer hose.
  • Drawings that outlast us. Sheets legible to a builder in ten years’ time, long after the phone call is forgotten.
  • One fee, said plainly. You hear the figure before we start, and it is the figure you are invoiced.
Read the price list
Phone first

Ring the studio, speak to the drawing board

(408) 655-2155

We answer Monday to Thursday, 10am–5:30pm, and Fridays until 2pm. Out of hours, write to info@skyecrofte.com and we’ll ring back.

Come to the studio door

315 Everett Avenue
Palo Alto, CA 94301
Mon–Thu
10am–5:30pm
Friday
10am–2pm
Sat–Sun
Closed
Find the studio door on Everett
Call the studio · (408) 655-2155