landscape studio · kyiv · since 2012

gardens that are better in year ten than in year one

Kaldervud plans, builds and plants private gardens, courtyards and public spaces — from the first walk across the soil to the season when the canopy finally closes overhead.

start a project see selected work
Illustration of a layered garden — sky, distant trees, meadow and foreground grasses
Courtyard on Podil · third summer after planting

A garden is the only architecture that is unfinished on the day it opens.

We work with that on purpose. A Kaldervud plan is drawn for three moments at once — the week the fence comes down, the third summer when the beds close, and the tenth autumn when the trees begin to shade everything you thought was permanent.

Since 2012 that has meant private gardens in Kyiv and the region, courtyards for residential complexes, roof gardens above city buildings, and public spaces that have to survive both a heatwave and a school holiday.

  • 2012the studio's first season
  • 04080Nyzhnoiurkivska 9, Kyiv
  • 6disciplines under one roof

what we do

six kinds of work, one garden

Most projects use four of them at the same time. You can also hire any one on its own.

landscape design

Site analysis, concept, masterplan, planting palette, lighting and water. You receive drawings a contractor can build from and a plant list a nursery can quote.

concept → masterplan → plans

territory improvement

Paths, terraces, steps, retaining walls, drainage and irrigation, lighting circuits, play and rest areas — the invisible half that decides whether a garden ages well.

hardscape · drainage · light

planting & greening

Nursery selection in person, large-tree transplant with a root ball, meadows and lawns, seasonal beds — and the first year of care, which is where most gardens are actually won or lost.

nursery · transplant · aftercare

architectural design

Pavilions, pergolas, garden buildings, pool surrounds and outdoor kitchens — designed with the planting, not bolted on afterwards, and documented for approval.

pavilions · pergolas · permits

materials supply

Stone, clinker, timber, substrates, mulch, geotextile, edging and irrigation components delivered to the site on the day the crew needs them — at trade prices, without the markup.

stone · timber · substrate

roofing & green roofs

Waterproofing, root barriers, drainage layers and lightweight substrates for extensive and intensive roof gardens — plus conventional roofing when the structure asks for it.

roof gardens · waterproofing

the fourth dimension

one garden, four gardens

We design every planting so that something is happening in all four seasons — colour, structure, scent or silhouette. Choose a season and watch the same plan change.

The same garden plan rendered in the selected season

high summer

The beds have closed, the meadow is at full height and the canopy is doing the work of an awning. Irrigation runs before sunrise; nothing is planted, everything is watched.

in the garden
mowing, deadheading, irrigation checks
in the studio
autumn planting orders, nursery visits

how it grows

from the first walk to the third summer

  1. one

    walking the site

    Two hours on the ground with a spade and a compass. Soil, groundwater, light through the day, wind corridors, the neighbour's roof, the view you never noticed. Nothing is drawn before this.

  2. two

    the plan

    Concept in two directions, then one masterplan: zoning, levels, circulation, planting palette and an honest budget in three tiers. You approve a drawing, not a mood board.

  3. three

    documentation

    Working drawings: setting-out, levels and falls, drainage, irrigation, lighting circuits, construction details, planting plan with quantities and pot sizes. Everything a crew needs to work without phoning.

  4. four

    building & planting

    Our own crews: earthworks, drainage, hardscape, then soil preparation and planting in the right window. The designer is on site weekly and signs off every level before it is buried.

  5. five

    growing in

    Three years of scheduled care — formative pruning, feeding, replacement of anything that fails, and an annual walk in which we tell you honestly what to move. This is when the garden becomes itself.

selected work

places we still visit

A shaded inner courtyard planted with citrus trees in terracotta pots, lawn and patterned stone paving between building facades.

Courtyard on Podil

A shaded inner courtyard between two brick buildings, rebuilt as a shared garden for eleven families: permeable paving, a rain garden that swallows the roof runoff, and a shade planting that finally made the ground floor apartments open their curtains.

place
Kyiv, Podil
year
2024
area
1 200 m²
Mature pines with sculptural branches framing a colonnaded house and its lawn.

House among the pines

Seven-tenths of a hectare on sandy soil under mature pines. We removed almost nothing, corrected the levels by hand, and replaced a lawn that refused to grow with a dry meadow that now needs cutting twice a year.

place
Kyiv region
year
2023
area
0.7 ha
A roof garden of layered grasses, shrubs and a mature tree above paving and timber decking.

Roof garden, Nyzhnoiurkivska

An intensive roof garden on a converted industrial building, four hundred metres from our own studio. Structural survey first, then a lightweight substrate, wind-tolerant planting and irrigation that runs on collected rainwater.

place
Kyiv
year
2025
area
460 m²

Photography: Robert Scarth CC BY-SA 2.0 · YangChen(TW) CC BY 2.0 · Michael Barera CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

“Plant for the shade you will not sit in.”

— the sentence we open every first meeting with

the studio

Kaldervud has worked from Nyzhnoiurkivska 9 in Kyiv since 2012. We are landscape architects, a dendrologist, an engineer, a site manager and the crews who actually dig — deliberately kept in one company so that no one can blame a drawing they did not have to build.

We design in Kyiv and across Ukraine, and we take on projects from four hundred square metres upwards. Every project has one named contact from the first walk to the third-year review.

  • Landscape architecture & masterplanning
  • Dendrology & nursery selection
  • Drainage, irrigation & lighting engineering
  • Hardscape construction & roofing
  • Materials supply & logistics
  • Three-year maintenance programmes

first step

let's walk your site

Tell us roughly where it is and roughly how big. The first visit and the conversation that follows are free — we would rather see the ground before anyone talks about money.