Landscape design in Cumberland, Maine.
A full landscape plan in Cumberland has to reconcile a surprising number of layers for a town of about 8,600 people. The draft comprehensive plan maps three separate drainages, three aquifer areas, a shoreland overlay, conserved land along several property lines and a floodplain map updated in 2024. Designing plantings, hardscape, grading and drainage together is the only way to see how those layers affect a single property before anything is built.
Which drainage the property sits in
The town's watershed map splits Cumberland into the Piscataqua River drainage across West Cumberland, the East Branch of the Piscataqua in the middle of town, and a Coastal drainage that takes in the Foreside. Water from the first two joins the Presumpscot in Falmouth; the Foreside drains straight to Casco Bay. On a design plan, that decides where roof and patio runoff can be sent and how much of it should soak in on site rather than leave the lot.
The plan also identifies three aquifer areas beneath about 1,641 acres: one near Route 26/100, Skillin Road and Blackstrap Road; one near the Fairgrounds along Bruce Hill and Blanchard Roads; and one along Main Street from south of the Congregational Church on Tuttle Road to the North Yarmouth line. Most homes in town draw from bedrock wells, so over those areas a design keeps fertilized lawn modest and favors plantings that need little feeding.
Two hardiness zones in one town
USDA's 2023 map places the 04021 ZIP around Cumberland Center in zone 5b and the 04110 Foreside ZIP in zone 6a. A plant list drawn for a Foreside lot near the water can include a few choices that would be marginal inland, and a design for West Cumberland leans toward the tougher end of the range.
Neighboring conserved land shapes a plan too. Cumberland's trails and preserves, including Twin Brook, the Town Forest, Rines Forest and the 253-acre Knight's Pond Preserve, border many house lots, and the plan lists Asiatic bittersweet, autumn olive, black swallowwort and buckthorn as common invasives in town. Planting natives along those edges, rather than species that spread into the woods, is part of the design brief.
The town's floodplain maps, updated in June 2024, and its shoreland overlay are checked early as well, because a patio or regrade drawn into a mapped area needs permits that can change the layout.
Design · Planning · Full Installs
How we handle landscape design
We design landscapes that work as a whole — plantings, patios, walls, grading and drainage planned together before the first shovel breaks ground. Whether it is a full property redesign or a single outdoor living space, we walk the site, draw the plan and build it with our own crews.
See the full landscape design service page or everything we do in Cumberland, Maine.
Landscape Design in nearby towns
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- Commercial Mowing & Cleanups in Cumberland
- Excavation & Land Clearing in Cumberland
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- Tree Removal in Cumberland
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Mon–Sat 7:00am – 5:00pm · Based in Cumberland, Maine