About Huckabee Design Group
Designed with a Sense of Welcome
For Thomas Huckabee, a landscape should do more than complement a home. It should invite you into it.
That philosophy has its roots in Thomas's upbringing in Augusta, Georgia, where a love of gardening began early. While other children might have earned an allowance, Thomas remembers his mother offering a different reward: “I'll buy you a tree.”
She also taught him something that would become equally important to his approach to design: the value of Southern hospitality. His childhood home was a place where family and friends gathered, and where patios, porches and gardens became natural extensions of life inside the house.
Today, that idea remains at the heart of Huckabee Design Group.
“I want you to feel like you were invited,” Thomas says. “I want you to feel like you're part of the landscape.”
A Southern Approach to Landscape Design
Thomas describes his aesthetic as traditional Southern design with a sense of formality, softened by warmth and hospitality. There may be clipped boxwoods, structured plantings and classical lines, but the goal is never to create a landscape that feels untouchable.
Think English garden meets Southern hospitality: elegant, established and welcoming.
Just as importantly, a landscape should work throughout the year.
One of Thomas's early design lessons has stayed with him throughout his career: anyone can make a landscape look beautiful in spring. The real test is whether it still looks beautiful in winter. That philosophy informs landscapes designed around structure, seasonal change and year-round interest rather than a single moment of bloom.
And elegance doesn't have to mean endless maintenance. Thomas designs spaces to be enjoyed, not to become another obligation waiting at the end of a long day.
“You want to come home and enjoy your space,” he says. “You want to sit on the back porch, have a drink and relax. You shouldn't come home and think about everything you have to do.”
Rooted in Experience
Thomas studied Landscape Architecture at the University of Georgia and began his career working in horticulture and landscape design, including an internship with the Horticultural Department at Augusta National Golf Club.
He later worked as a landscape designer and project manager in Alabama and North Carolina, including several years with Logan's Trading Company in Raleigh. Along the way, his work expanded beyond traditional landscape design to include planters, floral design, seasonal installations, interiors, merchandising and special events.
When Thomas returned to South Carolina, he saw an opportunity to build something of his own, centered on the work he most enjoyed and the traditional Southern landscapes that had influenced him from the beginning.
He founded Huckabee Design Group with a deliberately broad name. Landscape design may be its foundation, but Thomas's interests have never stopped at the garden gate. Today, his work encompasses landscapes and gardens, swimming pool design, outdoor living spaces, planters, floral and seasonal design, and special events.
Personal from Concept to Completion
Huckabee Design Group is intentionally personal.
Clients work directly with Thomas, beginning with the first conversation and continuing through design and installation. He collaborates with trusted contractors and specialists to execute each project, but remains closely involved throughout the process.
That often means being on site as the design takes shape, adjusting a placement, reconsidering a tree or refining a detail when seeing it in the landscape reveals a better solution.
For Thomas, a plan isn't something to hand off. The finished space matters too much.
That one-on-one, hands-on approach allows each landscape to respond not only to the architecture and property, but to the people who will live there.
Spaces That Bring People Together
Ultimately, Thomas believes the best landscapes aren't simply admired. They're used.
A patio becomes the place where everyone gathers. A pool becomes part of summer memories. A porch offers somewhere to unwind at the end of the day. A garden welcomes friends before they've even reached the front door.
It's an idea Thomas learned from his mother long before he made a career of design: beautiful spaces have the power to bring people together.
And that may be the simplest expression of what Huckabee Design Group sets out to create: places that feel beautiful, comfortable and unmistakably welcoming.