The designer.
Lee Alderman — multi-generational Floridian, third-generation Sarasota County, three decades of practice, and a reputation for gardens that get better with age.
A third-generation Floridian, with a designer's eye and a grower's patience.
Most landscape companies serving Sarasota and Manatee counties were founded by people who moved here. Lee Alderman is a multi-generational Floridian — his family has been working this soil for decades. He knows the canopy trees by their winter silhouettes. He knows which palms hold through a hurricane, and which "drought-tolerant" species on a nursery tag are a lie.
Silvermoon is not a maintenance company with a design service bolted on. It is a design studio. Every project begins with a measured drawing and a written plant palette. The build follows the plan, not the other way around. This is rare here, and it is the reason half of our new work each year comes from clients we've served for over a decade.
Lee is, in the words of his reviewers, "an artist in this craft." A reviewer named Linda Scheller wrote that his designs have "depth, dimension and color for each chosen space — like painting a painting." Another, ALEX. RAU, said the low-maintenance plant selection saves money year after year. That is the work: gardens that look composed on installation day and continue to look composed in year ten.
— L.A.
Measure. Draw. Plant. Wait.
The studio's process is older than it sounds. We meet on site, walk the property in different light, and listen more than we talk. A measured drawing follows. A plant palette, written down — species, sizes, quantities, the year-three look. Then the build, with the same crew that drew the plan.
The waiting is the part most people skip. A garden is the slowest architecture. A tree planted today is a different garden in five years. We design for the patient client and we plant for the climate of the next decade, not the photo on the install day.
Native plants, native sense.
The easy mistake in Sarasota is to plant what looks good in a magazine photo from Atlanta or Charleston. Those plants fail here, or they survive but spend their lives looking tired. The native palette — sabal palm, saw palmetto, firebush, muhly grass, wild coffee, coontie, live oak — was built by millions of years of trial and error. We work with that palette as a starting point and compose accent plantings on top of it.
This is what a multi-generational Floridian brings to a design. The land is not exotic. It is well known, and that knowledge is the entire point.
Most landscape designers in Sarasota and Manatee counties are not native Floridians. Lee and his family, on the other hand, are multi-generational natives.
Walk the property with Lee.
The first consultation is on us — an on-site visit, a measured drawing if the project warrants one, and a written plan. No pressure, no upsell.