A good landscape looks beautiful the day we finish planting. A great one looks even better twenty years later. That difference is the whole reason Meadow View Gardens exists. We provide landscape design in York PA and throughout York County, and every project starts the same way it has for more than 30 years: with owner and designer Rick Jacobus standing in your yard, listening to what you actually want from it.
We are a family-run business based on Poplars Road in York, part of our full range of landscaping services in York PA. Rick hand-designs every project, selects the plants alongside you, and manages the job from the first walkthrough to the final rake pass. There is no design department handing plans to a crew that has never seen your property. The person who drew your landscape is the person on site while it goes in.
What does the landscape design process look like?
It starts with listening, not sketching. Before Rick draws a single bed line, he wants to hear how you use your yard, what frustrates you about it, and what you picture when you imagine it done. Some clients arrive with folders of photos. Others just know they want less lawn to mow and somewhere pleasant to sit in the evening. Both are great starting points.
From there, the process moves through a few natural steps:
- The walkthrough. Rick walks the property with you, looking at sun and shade patterns, drainage, slopes, sight lines from your windows, and how the space connects to your home. He will point out options and considerations you may not have thought of, like where a privacy planting will actually block a neighbor’s view, or which corner stays soggy every spring.
- The design. Rick creates a functional, beautiful landscape design shaped around your property and your budget, then walks you through it so you understand why each element sits where it does.
- Plant selection, together. This is the part clients tell us they remember.
- Installation. Our crew installs the design with Rick managing the work start to finish.
Why design a landscape for how it looks in 20 years?
Because plants are not furniture; they grow, spread, and change shape every season, and a design that ignores that will outgrow itself. We consider the initial aesthetics of every design as well as how the garden will look in 20 years. That means spacing shrubs for their mature size instead of cramming them in for instant fullness, choosing trees whose canopy will frame your house rather than swallow it, and layering perennials so the garden fills in gracefully as it matures.
“I commit myself to enhance customers’ homes for them to enjoy their outdoor space for many years to come. Year after year when maintained correctly, the landscape should bloom more profusely as it matures and that’s my ultimate goal.” — Rick Jacobus, owner & designer
A landscape designed this way rewards patience. The second spring looks better than the first, and the tenth better still. And when you pair a long-view design with regular landscape maintenance like mulching, pruning, and seasonal clean-ups, you protect that trajectory instead of watching it slide backward.
What plants grow best in York County soil and climate?
The honest answer: the ones chosen by someone who has planted here for decades. York County throws real variables at a garden, with clay-heavy soils in many neighborhoods, rocky ground in others, winters cold enough to punish borderline plants, and summers that stress anything sited in the wrong exposure. Our staff has an in-depth knowledge of which shrubs, trees, and perennials will thrive in this area, because we have watched them succeed and fail in local yards for over 30 years.
That local knowledge shows up in the details. It is knowing which hydrangeas hold up on a windy hillside near Dover, which evergreens make a dense privacy screen without outgrowing a small suburban lot, and which perennials keep color coming from April frost to October frost. Vibrant colors and textures, properly located, bring a home to life and make it stand out, but only if the plants behind them are genuinely suited to the site.
This matters more than it might sound. Plants raised in our conditions are already acclimated to our conditions, so they establish faster and struggle less than material trucked in from a different growing zone. It also means that when you and Rick are selecting plants for your design, you are choosing from real, healthy specimens you can see and touch, not thumbnails in a catalog.
Ready to love your outdoor space?
Owner-designed by Rick Jacobus and built by our own crew, start to finish — free, no-pressure consultations.
Who installs the landscape after the design is done?
Our own crew, with Rick managing the project from start to finish. Design and installation are not separate businesses here; the same hands that shaped the plan prepare the beds, set the plants, and finish the grade. That continuity is why the finished landscape actually matches the drawing you approved.
Installation is where craft shows. Beds are cut clean and shaped to the design, soil is amended where the site needs it, and every tree and shrub is set at the right depth and orientation so it establishes well. Because we also build paver patios and retaining walls and walkways, we can coordinate plantings with hardscape in a single cohesive project instead of two contractors working around each other. Many of our designs also weave in koi ponds and pondless waterfalls or specialty gardens and landscape lighting when the space calls for them.
Do you design landscapes outside the city of York?
Yes. We serve York PA and towns across York County, including Dover, Dallastown, Red Lion, Manchester, Wrightsville, and the smaller communities in between, from Shiloh and Weigelstown to Windsor and Jacobus. If you live in York County, chances are good we have already designed and planted a garden near you.
Ready to talk about your landscape design?
Tell us about your property and what you would love it to become. Rick will walk it with you, listen first, and show you what is possible, and the consultation is free.
