The easy answer is yes, absolutely, 100%, no question! With over 20 years of experience designing and building landscapes in southern Ontario, we have seen firsthand what happens without a landscape design.
In our early years, our crews were given a quick tour of the property that went something like “Patio goes here, walkway there and a set of steps over here”. The message could get lost in translation and there was a lot of detail left up to the foreman to interpret. If the clients weren’t home to watch over the crew they may not get what they had envisioned. Later on, the foreman would receive a rough sketch sometimes on a St. Louis Bar napkin. While this would be better than nothing, again dimensions would be skewed, products could be misinterpreted, and notes could be missed.
Finally, after several tough conversations and unprofitable jobs, we no longer send our crews out to a job without a scaled professional landscape design. This has made for a much better client experience as well as a better working environment for our crews on site. They have a plan they can always refer to whenever unsure.
Pricing
The upfront fee can cause some sticker shock to the average consumer. Our average design cost last year was $1,450.00. One of the most common comments when we tell our clients the price is “it costs that much for a piece of paper?!” We try to take the time to explain you are not paying for the piece of paper, you are paying for the designer’s experience, expertise, and local knowledge of your job site and the materials that will thrive in it.
Can you afford not to get a design?
Clients hired a contractor to build a patio 12’ X 12’, without a scale plan or design. Then once the patio was installed the clients put all their patio furniture on their new patio and realized that it wasn’t big enough. During the planning process, you would have discussed what you wanted to use the patio for and what type of furniture you were planning on using, which would have been drawn on the plans. This way we assure all your furniture and fixtures will not only fit but have functionality. The cost of making this patio larger after the fact, is far more costly then the plan itself.
A plan/design will cost approximately 3% of your overall project cost. For example, if you were going to spend $50,000 building your outdoor living space, thee plan would cost approximately $1,500. If you made any changes to your plan during the construction/ installation of the project, where we would have to redo any work that wasn’t clearly stated on the plans, you would easily spend more than 3% on the redo’s. Change orders are costly and can be avoided in the planning process.
