Loy Landscapes was founded in 2012 by Charlie Loy in San Francisco, California. With over twenty years of landscape design work experience Charlie has strived to find a balance between function and aesthetic within the landscape. His design philosophy is one that focuses on developing robust rich soils and using minimal water to create landscapes that appear lush year round. In this way a landscape can help improve water quality and help to mitigate any negative environmental impacts many landscapes perpetuate through excessive water consumption and over fertilization.
"Our gardens can not only look good, but feel good as well."
"I have always had a profound curiosity with the natural world. The elements, the weather, why a certain rock is there and a certain plant is over here. As most people, I have always loved to ask the question 'why?'. My 'why's' have become increasingly obsessed with weather patterns and elements of nature as I grow older. I find myself going on long hikes during my free time and exploring new places looking for different plants, rocks, and animals. The more time I spent doing this the more I pay attention to the unique lighting and spacing associated with these ecosystems. There becomes a deeper meaning of the patterns and spacings, something beyond the assumed necessities of resource management and survival they teach us in biology, something more primal, something deep within the human spirit that says not only does that look nice, but it feels nice. Somehow a flowing carpet of redwood clover with seemingly random tufts of ferns calmed me even in my most anxious of teenage moments because it looked so good. This intrigued me.
My younger years brought on a new outdoor passion, the ocean. I started surfing in my spare time which fostered an intimate relationship with the ocean that went beyond riding waves. I began to pay more attention to all of the dynamic interactions at the coast such as the winds and the reasons behind their directions, and the mysterious sandbars that magically appeared and disappeared overnight through the powerful currents of the surf zone at all my favorite beaches.
Just by spending more time at the coast I have become increasingly fascinated with the interaction between the land and the sea, particularly where fresh water confluences flow into the ocean. There are dynamic sediment interactions, food-web hierarchies and violent exchanges of water that drastically carve the landscape and reveal secrets within its geology. I have begun to pay more homage to the critters of the sea as I have witnessed the vital role they play in our lives and how delicate their ecosystems are. I love finding a new variant of sage just as much as seeing two sand crabs battle in the tide pools.
All of the earth's waters flow down and eventually enter the sea carrying a lot with it. Landscape design has a significant impact on water quality all around the world and many ornamental landscapes actually increase water pollution. Through using regional plants and appropriate amounts of nutrients and irrigation, landscapes can be more responsible and improve water quality through less nutrient runoff, healthy soils, and phytoremediation. Not only will the critters be happier, but we will all have a better quality of life by preserving the quality of our waters.
The whole earth is breathing like an animal, constantly stirring, turning rock outcroppings into migrating sand dunes and ripples into ten-story waves." --Charlie