Whole-Property Landscape Design
The handover
A landscape is a system somebody has to run after we leave. Being told how is part of the work.
A finished landscape is a set of systems that somebody now has to operate: an irrigation controller, a lighting transformer, pool equipment, drainage that needs to stay clear. Handing over a beautiful garden and no explanation is how a project starts degrading the week after the final payment.
The irrigation zoning, explained rather than handed over
The irrigation zoning is explained rather than handed over: which valve waters what, why those plants are grouped together, and what to change in each season. The most common cause of a garden failing in year two is a controller nobody understands being left on the setting it was commissioned with.
The controller set for the season you are actually in
A schedule that suits a July handover is wrong by November, and a garden watered on July settings through a wet winter is a garden with root problems. Leaving with it set correctly for now, and with the reason written down, is a five-minute job that saves plants.
Where the services are
As-built locations for conduit, sleeves, mainlines and valves. This is the difference between a future phase being straightforward and a future phase beginning with exploratory digging.
An honest account of what this landscape needs
Every design carries a maintenance load, and it is a design decision how big that load is. What needs cutting back and when, what will outgrow its position, what is on a five-year clock rather than a permanent one. A client who is surprised by that in year three was not told properly in year one.
Questions people actually ask
Do you maintain the landscapes you build?
Ask us about it for your property. The more important point is that the plan should be maintainable by whoever is actually going to maintain it, and a design that only works with a crew nobody has hired has failed.
What if something fails after handover?
Tell us. Plants fail, and so does workmanship occasionally. What matters is whether the company answers the phone, and the answer to that is not something a website can prove to you.
How much maintenance will it need?
That depends on what was designed, and it is worth deciding deliberately rather than discovering. A low-maintenance property is a design brief, not a hope.
The rest of the guide
Whole-Property Landscape Design, one question per page.
- Whole-Property Landscape Design: the complete guideThe hub page: what it is, the sequence, and what one company changes.
- 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.
- Where this falls shortThe page most companies in our position do not write.
Tell us about the property
Send a few lines about what you have and what you want. We will tell you what we think it takes, what order it should happen in, and whether we are the right company for it.