Rainville Design Studio

First off, let me start by saying that I love Miriam’s work. She really seems to understand our style and our vision. We had a rough start when we hired her at the end of last year. She was extremely apologetic and promised that we would be her top priority in the new year. In the new year she delivered some beautiful plans that we were very pleased with and picked many species and details in the plans that we were not familiar with and go over some changes that we would like to make and get her input. We have requested many meetings to go over her plans with us (since our agreement states we would have 2 meetings per stage), but she cannot seem to commit to a time or date. We even tried to address some of our questions over email and another follow up email and we have still not heard back from her. We are at a crucial time of our process and the landscape team need to know what to do, but we have been stalling since we really want to go over the plans with her before executing. Unfortunately, at this point I have to give her a 2 star rating due to the lack of communication that has already caused some mistakes on our project. I will put up an update once our project is complete.

We live at the beach and its very difficult to find plants that both look good and can survive. Miriam did a fabulous job on all counts and delivered a final product that we love. We have many passer-​bys on the strand and we constantly get compliments and inquiries about our landscape. Besides the soft scape, she completely re-​designed the hardscape areas creating a functional barbecue/​seating area and other surfaces that are usable and look great. MIriam was responsive (still checks in), incredibly creative and really great to work with. We look forward to working with her again.

My experience with Miriam Rainville is a little different than the previous reviews. I hired her based on a recommendation from a neighbor and because she did an amazing job with their outside space. My property was very unique. I didn’t know it but I needed huge retaining walls built with pilings 35′ deep in order to secure my lot before she even started her design. Hours and hours were spent meeting with geologists, soil testers, engineers, concrete contractors and city planners. She negotiated the best job for the best price, was on-​site supervising every day and she knew I was spending money that I had budgeted for her design… I couldn’t have gotten through Phase One without her expertise. When I have the money to start Phase Two she will be the ONLY designer I’d ever consider. If she is busy I will gladly get at the end of the line and wait – she is worth it…

We hired Miriam Rainville 9 years ago to do our landscaping. We built our home in Palos Verdes Estates and Miriam helped us during the completion stages with both the hard scape and soft scape landscaping. She has a good reputation with the City of Palos Verdes Estates and was very helpful in getting our landscape plans approved by the city, as well as doing a beautiful job with our garden. She is very knowledgeable with the overall layout of your yard, i.e., stonework, placement of planters, walls, pots, fountains, etc., as well as the selection of unique varieties of plants that are indigenous to the area. Every garden is interesting and different and a true piece of art! The color palate she achieves in your garden is amazing with all the different hues and placement of the plants. Several of our neighbors have used her services and are very pleased with their gardens as well. We have received several compliments on our landscaping, as well as having our garden photographed and featured in Coastal Living Magazine and South Bay Home Magazine. We can call Miriam any time when we want to spruce up the garden and she always does a great job!

We hired Miriam several months ago when our new-​ish garden didn’t seem to be filling in very well – neighbors down the street have a mature garden designed by Miriam, and it is gorgeous, so we asked for a referral. Miriam immediately suspected that we had a soil problem and brought in one of her awesome local colleagues who turned out to be a world soils expert (he really is; I checked). Based on his analysis, we had our soil amended and saw a fairly rapid improvement in the plant life. Additionally, her recommended water expert redesigned our irrigation system to great improvement. The icing, though, is the thoughtful and very pretty overall design she created for us, very much based on her correct interpretation of our likes and dislikes as well as our microclimate, which our previous landscape designers had not considered well. Our garden now smells (!!!) and looks lovely, and we seem to be a haven for hummingbirds and butterflies. I also have a bountiful kitchen garden that I use almost every day. We found Miriam delightful interpersonally and responsive. I cannot speak to the experience of the previous writer, but our experience has been the opposite – we had several important gatherings in the Summer and Fall, and she made absolutely sure that everything was perfect for us before guests arrived. Certainly, she is busy – she’s a one woman show, after all! – but we have never felt she was too busy for us or unreachable, and she has even responded consistently to questions on Sundays or during holidays. If you’re looking for a gifted designer who can make your yard of any size a sanctuary, then she is the person for you.

Miriam Rainville will promise you the world but will deliver the bare minimum. We hired her to work on the plans for our landscape design. We were upfront about our desired schedule when we contacted her in early December. She promised us that she had the availability and the resources to work on our project within the desired timeline. After receiving her retainer fee, I heard virtually nothing from Miriam for almost a month. My phone calls and emails were not returned and I finally received an email response a month after our engagement started stating that she is «still working on it.» That was it for the details. She never had the time in her schedule to meet, even though she gave me her availability and when I called to confirm a meeting during one of those available dates, she told me that she couldn’t meet on such short notice. Keep in mind, she gave me her available times/​dates, I didn’t just create a time that was only convenient for me without asking her first. That was just one example of her complete disorganization and horrible customer service. I’m not an overly demanding client. I just expect phone calls and emails to be returned and I expect that a timeline (that she agreed to) would be honored. It took her over 2 months to get us a very basic design which left us completing the drawings ourselves in Photoshop. We had about a month left to hardscape and landscape our property before our deadline (we planning a huge family get-​together/​birthday party on a set date with family flying out from the east coast — Miriam was aware of this date from the very beginning in early December). Thank goodness for the landscapers we hired to take her place. They were professional, timely, and helped us to get our project completed after Miriam completely failed us. We collaborated with our new landscapers as we tried to figure out the challenges that Miriam’s partially completed design left us. What she left us with was not to scale and did not account for any of the physical challenges/​elevations of our space. But she wouldn’t have known that since she never had the time in her schedule to come meet us on site after she collected her retainer. Worst experience ever.