The warm weather has the team at Carex Design Group feeling ready for drinks on a restaurant patio. Fortunately, our landscape architect and landscape designers have been working with Xul Beer Company to design and implement a new outdoor space at their brewery in downtown Knoxville. Grab a beer and check out this brewery patio landscape design …

Brewery Patio Landscaping Ideas

With an office full of landscape designers who appreciate craft beer, there was no shortage of brewery patio landscaping ideas. With our past work at several other breweries, we knew there were some considerations to keep in mind for a commercial restaurant landscaping design.

• Who’s using the space and how? We talk to restaurant owners about activities they host so that we can plan space for things like live music or trivia games. While families with kids may like having play areas where kids can run around, those elements would be wasted space if the space is for adults only. Alternatively, fire pits might be dangerous with kids running around, but safer for an adult customer-base.
• Is the company’s brand casual or active, bold or refined? The overall brand of the company is critically important to ensure that the outdoor area makes sense in the broader context of the company’s vibe. If the brand is all about the active beer culture and we don’t provide space for yard games or other activities, we’d be missing the mark with potential customers.
• Should the space be usable year round or will the restaurant stop serving outside in the winter? Weather considerations are important with commercial landscape design because it can boil down to lost revenue for the company if the space isn’t comfortable during a given season. For example, we need to think about whether we need shade in the summer or functionality for heaters in the winter. We might want to avoid flowering plants to avoid pollen-covered tables in the spring or avoiding trees with a lot of fall debris to make things easier on the restaurant staff.

After germinating on those ideas (see what I did there!), we kicked off the design collaboration with Xul.

Brewery Landscaping Design Process

The only directive we had from the Xul leadership team was that they wanted the outdoor space to help connect the company’s current brewery with a neighboring space they had recently purchased.

We also had to prioritize seating so that Xul could maximize the number of people they could serve at any given time. To that end, we explored several options to optimize the quantity of seats in relation to landscaping elements such as retaining walls, plants and barrier fencing. What’s more, we had to ensure there was room for and access to the food trucks, which are regular visitors at the brewery.

Overall, we were constrained with the size of the patio since the area is surrounded by a parking lot on one side, the building on another as well as a sidewalk and a road. With the patio space being pre-defined, we got creative with our design to make it functional.

The team designed ribbons of  pavers weaving through the patio to mimic the movement of people in and out of the space. One of the ribbons extends from one end to the other, acting as a meandering walkway within the patio. The ribbon design not only provides interest for customers (both inside the brewery and on the patio), but it also complements the brewery’s logo, which features sweeping ornamental lettering with ribbon-like serifs accenting the letters.

The team chose contrasting paver colors to break up the visual monotony of the large area and found that the bold colors also spoke to Xul’s brand, which is quite fierce, featuring black and gold.

The main paver choice was a Scandina Gray Belgard Dimensions 6 paver in a random pattern across the space. The contrasting Graphite color of the same paver in a herringbone pattern made up the ribbons while we used the Scandina Gray in a running bond pattern to transition from one color to the other.

To address the distraction of the busy road along one side of the patio, we extended the existing fence to serve as a visual barrier between the patio and the road. This fencing along with a planting area added as a natural barrier helps to soften the hardscape elements such as the retaining wall.

Commercial Landscape Construction at Xul

After a productive design process during which we built a good relationship with our clients, the Xul team asked us to manage the installation. With the complex design, we called in our friends at Magnolia Landscape Construction to build the project. With our role as project manager, we helped manage the brewery patio landscaping costs by breaking the construction into phases that could be implemented down the road. In addition, because this was a commercial landscape design in Tennessee, we had to navigate the many permitting hurdles and code requirements to keep the construction team making progress and prevent delays.

In addition to the paver patio, a major construction element was the retaining wall constructed with Belgard Ab Metropolitan wall block (pictured below). This wall helped transition the grade from the street and sidewalk down to the brewery entrance and allowed a portion of the patio to be nestled below the street level.

The team at Magnolia also installed plants ranging from ground cover with Big Blue Liriope to shrubs such as Fire Chief Arborvitae and trees, including Purple Velvet Crepe Myrtles.

Plus, proving a long-held construction tradition that something unexpected will always pop up, we found buried steps from the old row houses that were demolished in the 60s to make room for Interstate construction. In addition, we found what might have been the footings of a sign from the Porsche dealership that was previously in the building.

Have a Beer and Contact Us

You can see this project in person while you’re having a beer at Xul and check out other patio landscaping photos here. When you’re ready to start your own residential or commercial landscaping project, fill out our contact form, or call us at 865-765-5550.