The reasons for consulting a professional landscaping firm outnumber the seeds in a sunflower. Planning on planting trees? Thinking hard about hardscape? Wondering how to decrease erosion or increase curb appeal?
A landscape firm can help. And as the concept of the outdoor room spreads like pollen, landscapers are offering more products and services than ever.
“There’s a big movement in this country: Just as people have designed their indoor spaces, they’re moving outside to create spaces,” said Jeff Miller, president of creativexteriors, a Denver-based firm.
“Our industry is changing extremely rapidly. We have new technology and great new resources, and the plant palette is about 300 times bigger than when I came into this business about 25 years ago.”
If this is the year for you to dig in to a landscaping project, here are some things to consider – and some solid advice for working with a professional.
Before: Think it through
Imagine how you’d like to enjoy your yard. Do you have children or dogs who need a place to romp? Do you desire a chaise and some shade in which to read? A table at which to dine? A fire pit? Built-in grill?
You need ideas. Thumb through garden books and magazines. Keep a file of images that catch your eye and plants and trees you covet. It doesn’t cost anything to dream.
Also consider any problems in your present yard. Landscapers can critically access and maximize what a property has going for it – mature trees, views – but they probably won’t know water leaks into your basement unless you tell them. If the seemingly endless freeze-thaw cycle last winter created glaciers and wetlands in your back yard or you consistently trip over the front steps, you’ll need to let your landscaper know. These are the sorts of problems a landscaper can help solve.
Bear in mind your budget. For $1,000 or less – depending on your property and goals – you can purchase a professional landscape plan. You can make more than a modest amount of progress with a budget of $5,000. But to get started in earnest with an established professional, allocate at least $10,000. For that kind of cash (and some firms mean that literally and do not accept credit cards) you can get a reputable landscaper to tell you what he or she can do.
Once you have an idea of your heart’s desires and your bank account’s barriers, schedule a meeting with a landscape professional, who should be just that.
“Our industry is inundated with people who call themselves landscapers when they were the doorman at a downtown hotel the week before,” said Miller, who holds degrees in horticulture and landscape architecture and learned the business at the knee of his landscape architect father.
“You want to employ degreed landscape architects. You want horticulturists on board.”
It’s smart to do a little investigating. Check a firm’s references and warranty policies. Make sure employees are insured with worker’s compensation. And if the firm uses immigrant laborers, make sure they are legal, documented workers.
During: Be patient
Nothing can prepare you for the sight of a small bulldozer ripping through gardens you’ve carefully tended. Remind yourself of the truth the great thinker Rollo May declared: Nothing can be created unless something is destroyed.
Landscapers will eliminate a lot of headaches and create others. For example, tree roots could confound the excavation. Or you might discover that the line from the water main to your house is galvanized pipe and must be replaced by a plumber before the irrigation guy can set up your sprinkler system. Perhaps the two dumps of dirt your designer estimated to correct the grade of your front lawn, winds up as six.
In short, unanticipated problems can creep up like crabgrass.
There’s a reason we see plenty of “before” and “after” photos of landscape and few labeled “during.” Nobody cares to remember “during.” During is dirty. And loud. During can be gut-wrenching. Even though you may have cursed those ratty old junipers for years, they are familiar. You have watered them, fed them, pruned them. Strangers taking chainsaws to your plant material may give you pause. As with any home-improvement project, one of the best ingredients is patience.
Mike Eagleton is a Denver-based landscape designer who underscores the fluidity of a landscape project: “The plan is just a piece of paper,” Eagleton said. “It evolves. It’s organic.”
Changes will likely occur, but you need to communicate clearly so they don’t turn into horrible surprises. If your butchered but beloved cherry tree must stay because it’s the source of the charming cherry branches you force into bloom indoors each March, convey that clearly. Emphasize that you want your flagstones to run more toward red and brown and less toward pink and orange. If you’ve walked a path from your front steps to your faucet for 15 years and feel safe and happy doing so, don’t let the path disappear unless your designer has a better alternative.
Which he or she will. Trained, tried and true landscape pros produce surface plans the average gardener would never turn up even with a Rototiller. Plus they understand scale.
“You’re outside competing with nature – 6o-foot trees – so arbors, steps, walkways can’t be small,” cautions Eagleton. “People get scared and don’t get scale right: It’s almost always too small.”
A good landscaper can help homeowners make difficult, often drastic, decisions.
“People will put in a new landscape around an ugly, shabby tree that needed to be removed, or they end up leaving in that falling-apart patio and working around it,” Eagleton says.
Rather than accepting your cracked concrete, a landscape firm is apt to hammer it out, and while they’re at it, widen and redirect a path and then replace that boring gray concrete with squares of gorgeous, indigenous stone. Best of all: This will happen without you so much as lifting a trowel.
Though you will need to lift your checkbook. Which brings us to this hard but true lesson: Prepare to spend more than you are prepared to spend. These projects have a way of, to put it tenderly, blossoming.
Yet you must know when to say when. Once you’re immersed in the almost endless possibilities of landscaping, you may find yourself gripped by an enticing fever that fuels your imagination.
You may picture yourself lying next to a bed of hyacinths heady with spring’s colognes. You might swear you hear the gurgle and trill from multilevel waterfall that serves as a shower for a couple of pet ducks in your back yard.
Maybe you’ll add a stone wall to keep the ducks in – a wall with built-in planters for ferns and fuchsias and a stone patio with clusters of new teak furniture.
Meanwhile, unless you just cashed in a winning Powerball ticket, you’ll need to prioritize your fantasies and create your landscape in phases, which will come as no surprise to your pros.
Eagleton advises finishing one area first rather than spreading resources more thinly over a variety of areas. And he cautions against overkill.
“Everything matures,” he said. “I fight hard against planting so much that in three years people are overwhelmed and are ripping things out.”
After: Enjoy but maintain
Once the landscapers finish, another phase begins: maintenance.
“Construction is just the tip of the iceberg,” Miller said.
“If I can stress one thing, it’s maintenance. Landscape companies should always have maintenance to back up what they sell.” he said.
“And you don’t want a rinky-dink maintenance company because there’s a right way to mow a lawn and a right way to prune shrubs.”
Maintaining your landscape protects your investment, adds to your property value and provides you with your own natural sanctuary where, after completing your chores, of course, you can sit back, relax and start all over as you fantasize about the next phase in your landscape plan.
Colleen Smith writes from and gardens in Denver.
