Landscape design in Freeport, Maine.
A full landscape design in Freeport often starts with arithmetic. On any lot within 250 feet of tidal water, a coastal wetland or a freshwater wetland, or within 75 feet of a stream, the town's shoreland ordinance sets hard ceilings on how much of the ground can be hard surface and how much can be cleared. Planting, patios, grading and drainage all draw on those same numbers, which is why we plan them together and build them with our own crews.
Freeport's coastline is long for its size: the Comprehensive Plan counts 41.9 miles including islands, 29 miles of it classed as coastal bluff. A lot of design work in town therefore happens inside those limits.
Two budgets on a shoreland lot
The first is the 20% cap on non-vegetated surfaces in the shoreland portion of the lot, outside the Marine Waterfront District. The house, garage, driveway, paths and patios all count. The second concerns clearing: beyond the 75-foot strip, cleared openings for every purpose, including lawns and septic areas, may not exceed 25% of the shoreland portion of the lot or 10,000 square feet, whichever is greater, counting land cleared in the past.
Inside the 75-foot strip the ordinance protects a buffer of trees and understory scored on 25-by-50-foot plots. A design that wants a view or a path to the water works within that system: one winding footpath, limb-ups on the lower third of trees, and new planting that adds to the stand rather than thinning it.
Drainage that leaves the lot the right way
Freeport's impaired urban streams, Frost Gully Brook and Concord Gully, are part of why the town adopted erosion-control rules under its MS4 stormwater permit. The Comprehensive Plan notes that since October 2023 an Erosion and Sediment Control Plan is required for projects disturbing more than 5,000 square feet anywhere in town, and for one acre or more draining to the urbanized area.
On Lamoine and Suffield silt loams, a design that regrades a yard has to give water somewhere to go: swales, rain gardens or stone-lined outlets planned on paper before any machine arrives, so the finished grade sheds water away from the house and toward a stable outlet.
Freeport's Section 529 applies the same thinking on a larger scale for developments under site plan review: the first half inch of runoff may need to be held for 24 hours to settle sediment before it leaves the site.
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 Freeport, Maine.
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Landscape Design in Freeport? Let's talk.
Tell us about your property and we will walk it with you — free estimates, straight answers, stonework guaranteed to hold its lines.
Mon–Sat 7:00am – 5:00pm · Based in Cumberland, Maine