The complete guide
Whole-Property Landscape Design
One team designing, building and planting an entire property, and the order that work has to happen in. This is the whole method, including the page about what it does not do.
Whole-Property Landscape Design is the practice of designing, building and planting an entire property as one project, under one company, in one sequence: grading and drainage first, then hardscape and structures, then the pool, then irrigation, planting and lighting. It is a way of organizing the work rather than a style of garden, and the thing it removes is the seam.
The normal experience is four companies who never speak to each other. Somebody draws it, a pool company digs, a mason builds the walls and the paving, and a landscaper plants at the end. Each does competent work inside its own boundary. The failures happen between the boundaries, and the space between them belongs to nobody.
Why the order is the whole argument
Every stage of building a landscape decides the conditions the next one has to live with. The fall of the ground decides where water goes; the hardscape fixes the levels everything else references; the pool needs equipment access a finished garden cannot give it; and planting depends on all of it, which is why it is last despite being the part everybody wants first.
Run in order, none of that is difficult. Run out of order, each stage undoes some of the one before, and the cost shows up as work done twice. Nearly every expensive repair we are asked to make on somebody else project is a sequencing failure rather than a workmanship one.
The sequence, in plain terms
- Grading and drainage
- The first stage in the sequence: the fall of the ground and where water leaves. Unglamorous, invisible in every photograph, and the reason a patio is still flat in year ten. It is also the first thing trimmed by a contractor pricing to win a job.
- Hardscape and structures
- Walls, paving, steps, coping, arbors and outdoor kitchens. These fix the levels and the routes, and once they are poured the planting can only work within them.
- Pool and spa
- Excavation, shell, plumbing and finish, each arriving with equipment that has to physically reach the hole. On most properties there is one route wide enough, and on a hillside there may be none once a wall exists.
- Irrigation, planting and lighting
- The living layer and the systems that serve it. Quick relative to everything before it, entirely dependent on all of it, and the stage that gets destroyed if it happens too early.
What one company actually changes, and what it does not
One company does not make any individual trade better. A firm that builds nothing but pools all year will know things about pools that a landscape company does not, and pretending otherwise would be marketing rather than truth.
What it changes is ownership. The grade, the levels, the services in the ground and the sequence have a single owner, and there is one company accountable for how the parts meet. It also changes the conversation when something is wrong, because there is nobody to point at.
The services in the ground are the cheapest decision on the project
The services in the ground are the cheapest decision on the project: conduit for lighting, a sleeve under the driveway, a gas stub where an outdoor kitchen might one day go, an irrigation mainline sized for the whole property rather than for the first phase. Each costs very little while a trench is open and requires breaking finished concrete the moment it is not.
They also belong to no particular trade, which makes them the item most reliably forgotten when four companies each price their own boundary. On a property being built in phases they are the difference between phase three being a straightforward build and phase three beginning with a demolition.
Almost nobody builds it all at once
Almost nobody builds a whole property at once. Most are built in stages, and phasing well is a decision taken at the beginning rather than a decision to stop halfway. A phased plan and an abandoned plan look identical after the first stage; they diverge at the second, and what separates them is what went into the ground while it was open.
The right first phase is usually the one with least to show for it: grading, drainage, services and the structural walls that set the levels. That is an unpopular recommendation and it is the one that makes everything after it cheap.
The ten pages beneath this one
Each answers one question about designing and building an entire property. The last one is the page most companies in our position do not write.
- The order of the workNot a scheduling preference. Every stage decides where water goes for the one after it.
- Four contractors, and the seamsThe normal way a property gets built, and the specific places it comes apart.
- Services before concreteThe cheapest decisions on the whole project, and the ones most often skipped.
- Drainage decides everythingThe unglamorous half of the budget, and the half that is still right in ten years.
- The pool inside the planThe shell is rarely the problem. Where it sits almost always is.
- Phasing a whole propertyAlmost nobody does it all at once. Doing it in the right order is what makes that cheap instead of expensive.
- What a 3D model settlesChanges on screen cost an afternoon. The same change after a footing is poured costs a demolition.
- One scope, one priceSix quotes for one property are usually six different projects, which is why they cannot be compared.
- The handoverA landscape is a system somebody has to run after we leave. Being told how is part of the work.
- Where this falls shortThe page most companies in our position do not write.
The questions people ask about hiring one company
What is whole-property landscape design?
Whole-Property Landscape Design is designing, building and planting an entire property as a single project under one company, in a fixed sequence: grading and drainage, then hardscape and structures, then the pool, then irrigation, planting and lighting. It is a way of organizing the work rather than a garden style, and what it removes is the seam between separate contractors.
Is it more expensive than hiring trades separately?
Hiring one company is sometimes more expensive on the headline number than hiring trades separately, because a single properly scoped price includes the grading, drainage, spoil removal and make-good that separate quotes push onto somebody else. Against the finished total including variations and the work that fell between scopes, frequently not. We will not claim it is always cheaper, because it is not.
Do we have to do the whole property?
No, and a great deal of our work is one element on an otherwise finished property: a failing retaining wall, a pool renovation, an irrigation system that was never zoned properly. Selling a whole-property approach to somebody who needs one wall rebuilt would be selling the wrong thing.
What is the biggest risk of this way of working?
The biggest risk of this way of working is concentration. With four contractors, one failing badly is a bad phase; with one company running everything, one failing badly is the whole project. That is a real argument against it and it does not disappear because we are the ones making it. Check the license, look at work that is several years old, and ask about a project that went wrong.
Where does the money go that we cannot see?
Grading, drainage, sub-base, spoil removal, access protection and the services in the ground. It is most of the cost that never appears in a photograph and most of the reason a landscape is still correct in ten years.
Have somebody walk the property
Most of what decides a landscape project is visible in twenty minutes on site and invisible in any conversation about it. We will walk it, say what we think it needs, and tell you plainly which parts are worth spending money on first.