Laura Robinson followed her passion, and success has followed.

A couple years after graduating from the University of Nevada, Reno with an international relations degree, Robinson was working as an engineering project manager for a Fortune 500 company. She was good at it, but she had no passion for it. For fun, she spent nearly every moment at home in her garden, sometimes from morning until night on the weekends.  Her yard became a sort of urban legend in the neighborhood, and she eventually began helping friends and neighbors beautify their own yards.  She loved it. Was “find a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life” really true?

Already on an established and lucrative career path, it felt risky to change careers to follow her heart—especially when it required going back to school.  But in the end, that’s what she did.

Robinson wrestled with whether to pursue a degree in landscape architecture, which would cost lots of money and time but possibly offer more long-term opportunities, or whether to enroll in a quicker, more focused associate’s degree at Front Range Community College. In the end, FRCC made the most sense given that residential landscape design was her focus.  “It was the perfect fit, and not one class in the curriculum was irrelevant to what I do today,” she says.

After graduating in 2003, Robinson launched Sundial Designs and began designing landscapes for homeowners, as well as contractors and their clients. Eventually one of the contractors she worked with asked her to project manage the installation process with his crews in addition to designing.

“I was like, well, shoot, I don’t have a whole lot of hands-on experience in the field, but it forced me to get in there with the crews, and it was such a blessing in disguise because I had to learn everything—how to design and build masonry retaining walls, steel pergolas, detailed carpentry elements, huge custom water features from scratch, as well as ordering and managing of materials and subs,” Robinson says. “And I think spending time in the field— actually on your hands and knees, looking at forms and footers—is crucial.”

It has turned out to be a wonderful business model, Robinson says. “And our clients love it because it’s so seamless. If problems happen, we usually catch them before they even know about them.”

Robinson worked all up and down the Front Range, from Castle Rock to Boulder. T hen in 2009, she moved to the Central Park neighborhood (previously known as Stapleton) and realized her new neighborhood was a hotbed of opportunity. Though yards are small, residents are design savvy and eager for “extremely dialed-in, boutique little spaces,” Robinson says. Sundial Designs has since installed more than 650 residential landscapes in Central Park alone, from small townhouse side yards to $400,000 installations with swimming pools.

“A lot of what we’re doing feels cutting-edge in terms of design and materials usage,” Robinson says. “Our clients hire us because of our highly finished and thoughtful end product. To accomplish this, we work with higher-end materials such as porcelain or natural stone pavers, which ultimately give a feeling of an indoor space outside. Our goal is to inspire and delight our clients with their finished outdoor spaces. Seeing the look of delight on their faces at the end of a project makes me feel like I am the luckiest person in the world to be able to do what I do for a living.”

Seven years ago, Robinson brought on a talented landscape architect, Sondra Haro, who has been instrumental in the company’s development.  Sundial Designs has won numerous awards over the years, and Robinson and Haro constantly have more work than they can handle. Robinson would love to bring on a couple more creative and passionate team members to train (and learn from) and ultimately share the workload.

“It’s time to step back from all of the doing and focus more on the building of the business,” Robinson says. “But I just love what I do so much, it’s really hard.”

Read more in this issue of Colorado Green Now: 

LMI Landscapes: A merger that works