So- remember how shitty 2016 was? It ended for BRS with a parking code violation called in by one of our neighbors. As a result, the city has asked us to pave our courtyard garden to make it available for parking.
As a garden design firm, our garden is obviously an important part of our business identity. It’s also a hardworking space for our business-
For instance:
wait- there’s also a video (it’s worth a click)
This is just a day in the life of our hardworking garden. 2017 note- when someone comes and asks to film an underwear commercial in your garden ALWAYS say yes.
When we leased this building- the garden looked like this. 
We cut the door into our space for loads of light and also so we could have a constant connection to the outdoors. Good for our soul and morale. Not to mention our baby plants- here grow our flower seeds we are starting for the Josephine house summer garden. 
The courtyard has been a showroom/role model for our high end synthetic turf that we try and suggest to almost every client. This is an installation shot of the lawn.
We are a garden design and maintenance firm that does NOT own a lawn mower on principle. We have to have saved millions of gallons of City water from installing these all over town. It’s a big leap of faith for someone to put in a plastic lawn (!) so it’s great to have one that can be test driven.
Back to our violation–
The City’s request is for 9 parking spaces and a fire lane on the property that must be paved. PAVED?! the antichrist to gardeners.
The trashy little secret is that we do park in this courtyard and drive all over it…. storing trucks overnight etc. I’m telling you this turf is tough. 
Thus after some major whining and flopping around, we’ve decided to take on the challenge of trying to abide by city’s needs while being green and staying beautiful in the process. We know the city also wants to encourage new thinking in terms of parking surface solutions, run off containment, heat reduction and tree health (note the heritage pecan at our fence line).
BRS will try and update our field notes here as we navigate the halls of our great city to find a kinder gentler alternative to paving the playgrounds of our scantily clad brothers and sisters, puppies, butterflies, bees and flowers.