2026 Elemental Design Group, Inc.
Landscape Architect & Design Serving San Mateo
Landscape Design & Build from Peninsula Estate Gardens to Coastal Hillside Retreats
Elemental Design Group is a licensed, award-winning landscape architecture firm led by Rhadiante Van de Voorde, ASLA, a landscape architect with over three decades of experience. Our team provides full-service landscape architecture and design for discerning homeowners throughout San Mateo County including Atherton, Woodside, Portola Valley, Hillsborough, Menlo Park, Burlingame Hills, Emerald Hills, and San Carlos.
WHAT WE DO
Landscape Architecture Design & Build Services Across San Mateo County
Landscape Architecture & Design
The Peninsula has its own grammar of design shaped by legacy estates, coastal fog, and ancient oaks. Our site-specific architectural drawings account for the local microclimates, topography, and character of each community. Whether you're on a flat parcel in Hillsborough or a ridgeline in Portola Valley, we don't design by template, we design for the property in front of us.
Plant Selection & Habitat-Sensitive Planting Design
Designing on the Peninsula means reckoning with its ecology: the soil type, the fog pattern, the deer pressure, and the water bill. Our designs work with those forces choosing native and climate-adapted species selected for the Bay's marine influence, dry summers, and the specific exposure of your site. The result is a garden that looks in intentional in May and October.
Hardscape, Stone & Custom Fabrication
What you build with matters as much as what you build. In Woodside and Portola Valley, that might mean dry-laid Pennsylvania bluestone, hand-selected lichen-covered boulders, or reclaimed wood that feel as though they've always been there. In Atherton or Hillsborough, it's more likely precision-cut limestone, polished concrete, and clean lines. We custom source and fabricate.
Hillside Grading, Retaining Walls & Drainage
Peninsula hillsides are beautiful and complex. We engineer grading and tiered retaining systems that solve real problems: unstable slopes, poor drainage, erosion, and unusable terrain. By creating new space rather than just stabilizing it, what felt like a liability turns into the most dramatic and memorable part of the property.
Pools, Spas & Water Features
The best water features don't announce themselves, they make you stop. On the Peninsula, that might be a vanishing-edge pool that appears to dissolve into the Bay, a still-water reflecting pool framed by clipped hedges on an Atherton estate, or a naturalistic boulder stream running through a Woodside woodland garden. We design for the stop.
Contractor Selection & Project Oversight
We maintain a vetted network of contractors who know the local inspectors, the county grading desk, the HOA covenants in Hillsborough, and the particular personality of working on a Woodside parcel with 40-foot oaks overhead. We're on-site, accountable, and involved until the last plant goes in the ground.
Landscape Architecture & Design
The Peninsula has its own grammar of design shaped by legacy estates, coastal fog, and ancient oaks. Our site-specific architectural drawings account for the local microclimates, topography, and character of each community. Whether you're on a flat parcel in Hillsborough or a ridgeline in Portola Valley, we don't design by template, we design for the property in front of us.
Plant Selection & Habitat-Sensitive Planting Design
Designing on the Peninsula means reckoning with its ecology: the soil type, the fog pattern, the deer pressure, and the water bill. Our designs work with those forces choosing native and climate-adapted species selected for the Bay's marine influence, dry summers, and the specific exposure of your site. The result is a garden that looks in intentional in May and October.
Hardscape, Stone & Custom Fabrication
What you build with matters as much as what you build. In Woodside and Portola Valley, that might mean dry-laid Pennsylvania bluestone, hand-selected lichen-covered boulders, or reclaimed wood that feel as though they've always been there. In Atherton or Hillsborough, it's more likely precision-cut limestone, polished concrete, and clean lines. We custom source and fabricate.
Hillside Grading, Retaining Walls & Drainage
Peninsula hillsides are beautiful and complex. We engineer grading and tiered retaining systems that solve real problems: unstable slopes, poor drainage, erosion, and unusable terrain. By creating new space rather than just stabilizing it, what felt like a liability turns into the most dramatic and memorable part of the property.
Pools, Spas & Water Features
The best water features don't announce themselves, they make you stop. On the Peninsula, that might be a vanishing-edge pool that appears to dissolve into the Bay, a still-water reflecting pool framed by clipped hedges on an Atherton estate, or a naturalistic boulder stream running through a Woodside woodland garden. We design for the stop.
Contractor Selection & Project Oversight
We maintain a vetted network of contractors who know the local inspectors, the county grading desk, the HOA covenants in Hillsborough, and the particular personality of working on a Woodside parcel with 40-foot oaks overhead. We're on-site, accountable, and involved until the last plant goes in the ground.
OUR CREDENTIALS
CA Landscape Architect License #3944 | CA Landscape Contractor License #926561
As a member of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA), Elemental Design Group upholds the profession’s highest standards of design, sustainability, and ethical practice. Designing in San Mateo County means understanding the full range of what the Peninsula demands from the formality and scale of Atherton and Hillsborough’s manor estates, to the naturalistic oak-woodland character of Woodside and Portola Valley, to the coastal-influenced microclimates of Emerald Hills and Burlingame Hills. For clients in San Mateo County, that ASLA membership is a mark of confidence that you’re working with a credentialed firm recognized and accountable at a national level.
What Our San Mateo Clients Say
Designing for the Peninsula's Most Exceptional Residential Landscapes
San Mateo County occupies a singular position in California. It is one of the state’s most storied and design-conscious residential markets. It’s home to some of the most significant private estates on the West Coast and one of its most ecologically layered. Ancient valley oaks shade multi-acre properties in Woodside while manicured formal gardens define the streetscapes of Atherton and Hillsborough. The pressure to design beautifully here is real, and so is the responsibility to design with ecological intelligence. Wildfire awareness, Bay Area water conservation requirements, creek setbacks, and heritage tree protections all shape what’s possible on any given parcel. Our work honors that complexity. We design landscapes that are as grounded in the land as they are expressive of the people who live on it.
Elemental Design Group has worked across San Mateo County’s most distinguished communities: Woodside, Atherton, Portola Valley, Hillsborough, Menlo Park, Burlingame Hills, and Emerald Hills, designing landscapes that reflect both the deep ecological character of the Peninsula foothills and the exacting standards of the people who live there. We specialize in navigating SFPUC water efficiency requirements and Bay Area irrigation restrictions for properties throughout the county, creating defensible and fire-resilient landscapes for hillside estates within San Mateo County’s High and Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones, and designing in sensitive compliance with the creek setback and riparian buffer regulations that affect properties near San Francisquito Creek, San Mateo Creek, and their tributaries. Where heritage oaks and bay laurels define a property’s character, we design around them – not over them.
Led by Rhadiante Van de Voorde, ASLA, with over three decades of experience across California’s most demanding terrain, our team understands what designing in San Mateo County actually requires. The regulatory fluency, the ecological intelligence, the material sensibility, and the design confidence to work at the level this county expects.
Zen-Inspired Enchantment in Mountain View
A compact Mountain View backyard, transformed into two distinct outdoor rooms united by a stone pedestal walkway crossing a Koi pond with Lotus plantings. The first room anchors around a raised dining deck with sweeping views and lush plantings that soften the perimeter. The second delivers an intimate fireside seating area with ambient string lighting and a bamboo privacy screen – a space that now feels far larger than its footprint and maximizes every square foot.
Landscape Architecture in San Mateo County — Your Questions Answered
Yes. Elemental Design Group serves homeowners throughout San Mateo County, including Atherton, Woodside, Portola Valley, Hillsborough, Menlo Park, Burlingame Hills, Emerald Hills, and San Carlos. Our work on the Peninsula spans multi-acre wooded estate gardens in the foothills to refined formal residential landscapes in the county’s most prestigious flatland communities.
Both Woodside and Portola Valley have strong local tree ordinances protecting native oaks, bay laurels, and other significant species. Grading, paving, or construction within a protected tree’s root zone requires permits and often an arborist report. San Mateo County also applies its own Heritage Tree protections to unincorporated properties. We manage all permitting documentation as part of our full-service process, so clients never have to navigate city and county requirements alone.
Much of the San Mateo County foothills including hillside areas of Woodside, Portola Valley, and Emerald Hills, fall within High or Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones (FHSZ). Fire-safe design is integral to our process, not an add-on. We incorporate defensible space zones (as defined by CAL FIRE), fire-resistant and low-water plant species, non-combustible hardscape buffers near structures, and strategic vegetation spacing all while preserving the naturalistic, wooded character that Peninsula estate owners prize.
These communities represent some of the most formal and architecturally significant residential gardens on the Peninsula. Properties here often feature long arrival sequences, mature tree canopies, defined garden rooms, and a strong relationship between interior architecture and exterior landscape. Our approach balances classical design sensibility with California’s ecological realities: drought-adaptive plants selected for elegance, hardscape proportioned to the scale of the estate, and an overall composition that reflects the owner’s lifestyle without sacrificing sustainability.
Much of San Mateo County is served by SFPUC water, with supplemental supply from the San Francisco Bay and local groundwater. SFPUC’s water supply is subject to drought-year curtailments, and many San Mateo cities enforce tiered water budgets and landscape irrigation restrictions. Our designs are engineered for efficiency from the start: native and climate-adaptive plants, smart irrigation controllers, drip and subsurface systems, and grading that captures rather than wastes rainfall, so your landscape performs beautifully in dry years as well as wet ones.
Yes, and it’s an area where deep local knowledge genuinely matters. Properties near San Francisquito Creek, San Mateo Creek, and their tributaries are subject to San Mateo County’s Riparian Corridor and Bay Area stream setback requirements, as well as potential Army Corps of Engineers and Regional Water Quality Control Board oversight. We design within these constraints in ways that feel intentional, creating naturalistic riparian edges and creek-adjacent gardens that are both ecologically sound and visually compelling.
Project costs vary based on scope, site complexity, and scale. For a full-service residential project in San Mateo County including site analysis, concept design, construction drawings, plant selection, and contractor oversight, design fees typically range from $25,000 to $75,000+, with total project budgets (design plus installation) commonly ranging from $150,000 to $750,000+ for estate-scale properties in Woodside, Atherton, or Portola Valley. We provide a clear, detailed fee proposal after an initial consultation at no obligation.
A full-service residential project, from initial consultation through completed installation, typically runs 10 to 18 months. Permitting timelines vary by jurisdiction. W Woodside and Portola Valley tend to have more involved review processes for significant grading or tree removal and contractor scheduling and plant availability are additional variables. We set clear expectations at the outset and actively manage every phase so the process is as seamless as the result.
Ready to Transform Your Santa Cruz Landscape?
From coastal gardens in Capitola to forested retreats in Boulder Creek. Let's design something extraordinary together. Contact our Boulder Creek studio to schedule a consultation. We'll discuss your vision, your site, and how Elemental Design Group can bring it to life.
Talk Directly with Rhadiante
Ready to Transform Your San Mateo County Landscape?
We bring genuine knowledge of San Mateo County’s terrain, microclimates, fire regulations, heritage tree protections, and permitting landscape to every project we take on here. Let’s talk about what’s possible on your property.
Licensed Landscape Architect · Member ASLA · Serving California since 1992