Are you thinking about revitalising your garden? Are you building a new home and need a completely new garden?
Before you start talking to landscape designers there are some vitally important things to know that will help ensure your project doesn’t go over time and over budget. Or give you stress and headaches all the way through.
Having designed and built over 550 designer gardens for clients all over Melbourne and the Mornington Peninsula we understand every aspect of the landscape design and construction process.
In this article we give you the benefit of our experience and share some important tips that can help ensure your project goes smoothly and you end up with the garden of your dreams.
It might be the most important article you’ll ever read before starting your garden project.
Note: It’s important when reading this article to understand the difference between a Landscape Designer and a Landscaper. A Landscape Designer or Landscape Architect is a professional who only designs gardens. A landscaper or landscape construction company actually builds the garden.
Many people who start searching for a landscape designer or landscape architect aren’t aware that there are 3 common but entirely different ways these professionals operate.
Which one you choose can make a massive difference to how smoothly your garden project runs for you.
Many people start by choosing a landscape designer or landscape architect on reputation alone. They research online, ask friends or family or just draw on their own experience. If you are seeking a particular type of garden design – such as coastal, native, contemporary, minimal - you might go for someone who specialises in one of these styles.
But given many landscape designers and landscape architects are on par with each other in terms of their ability to design beautiful gardens, another equally important, yet little known issue should factor into your choice – the way they operate.
These are the 3 different types of landscape designers and landscape architect in terms of how they operate:
Solo Operators are Landscape Designers or Landscape Architects who work either in single practice or with other similar professionals in a group. They may also incorporate horticultural designers in their operation.
This first group is characterised by the fact they ONLY design gardens and take little or no part in the actual construction process of the garden.
With these types of designers and landscape architects you may get the beautifully designed garden you always wanted but then when it comes to getting the garden actually built, you can often be left to your own devices.
This is because you engage them to design your garden, they hand over the design and you are then left to find the landscapers to actually build the garden for you.
There can be a number of issues when engaging this type of designer or landscape architect.
While they certainly can design absolutely gorgeous gardens, if they have no experience with the process of constructing what they have designed or have no real-world experience with the costs of many aspects of their design you can sometimes find the garden they designed is way over your budget.
You might not discover this until you take your garden design to a landscaper to get it quoted for construction and then you get a shock at the price.
(This is because they will often design in isolation away from the practical realities of creating a garden.)
Also you can find yourself caught between two worlds – the theoretical world of the designer and the practical world of getting your garden built.
This is because, in between the design phase and the construction phase of any major garden project are what we call ‘the preliminaries’. These can include many things. The planning & building permits. The working drawings. The engineering. The soil testing. The Heritage Overlay issues. The list can go on and on.
Some landscape designers and landscape architects simply do not engage in this part of the process. And the landscaper you engage to build your garden might not be interested in taking on these critical tasks either. Often they just like to get on with building the garden and consider all these preliminaries to be more the role of the designer.
Note that in almost every instance of a major landscaping project you will have to get permits and most likely working drawings, engineering, etc
This can lead to you having to become a kind of de-facto project manager on your landscaping project, chasing up and following through all these things. Not easy if you’ve never done it before.
If you’ve never been involved in this part of the process you might discover it can be complex, time-consuming, confusing and ultimately frustrating. There is nothing worse than waiting 6 weeks for a council permit to be issued only to discover they have rejected your paperwork for some errors and you have to resubmit the application and wait another 6 weeks. Or even longer. (We’ve known of permits taking 12 months to be approved!)
Note: This is not meant to be a slight in anyway on landscape designers and landscape architects who do work solo. As already said, they can design the most beautiful gardens and many are deserving award winners of prestigious Garden of the Year type awards.
Associated Operators are Landscape Designers or Landscape Architects who have an association with landscape construction companies.
Like the first group while they may operate as independents, they have cultivated relationships with landscapers over the years. This means that upon handing over the completed concept design for your new garden, they might refer you directly to a landscaper who they recommend as being suitable for the project. (Which landscaper they recommend can depend on the type of garden they have designed.)
Alternatively, they might put your garden project out to tender and ask for bids or quotes to build the garden from landscapers and then recommend one to you from this process.
Now while they might refer you to a landscaper it does not necessarily mean they will get involved in the project itself. This is because the relationship between the two can often be informal.
Once the landscaper has been appointed, whoever designed the garden can tend to see their role as being finished and will consider the project handed over. This can be a problem if issues arise during construction of the project that leads to an aspect of the garden needing to be redesigned. (And in almost every garden we have ever built over the past 35 years, there has been some degree of redesign work done during the construction process due to unexpected factors.)
In scenarios like this it is likely that your original landscape designer or landscape architect will have moved on to other projects. Therefore your redesign may take some time, causing all work to stop on the site while the redesign happens. Then when the redesign is finished the landscaper might have moved onto another project meaning your site sits there waiting.
This whole process is more common than you might think and can lead to lengthy and costly delays as the project bounces between the designer and landscaper.
Often the need for a redesign arises because something is dug up or discovered on site that affects where a garden feature was going to go and now that feature has to be relocated, affecting the whole garden and requiring redesign of it.
One positive about choosing this type of landscape designer or landscape architect is they are more likely to be willing to be involved in the preliminary steps so that can save you having to become project manager for these.
Integrated Operators are the final type of landscape designer or landscape architect. This is where the designer or architect is directly employed in the landscaping business so the entire process is integrated.
Whyte Gardens is one of these.
There are multiple benefits to engaging a landscape designer or landscape architect who is employed in a landscaping construction company.
First of all, the quality of your garden design is as good as you will get with the first two options. But you get a lot more.
But because the designer and landscaper both work under the same roof in the one company, you enjoy a completely seamless approach from start to finish.
You only have to deal with one point of contact throughout the entire project.
Everything happens smoothly without you having to liaise with different suppliers or find yourself running back and forth between designer and landscaper.
With a fully integrated service, your garden is designed for your final approval. Then all the preliminary steps are handled for you, by your garden designer/project co-ordinator, so you don’t need to worry about a thing.
Then the landscaping team get to work on constructing your garden. The designer remains engaged and connected throughout the entire project, ready to make any adjustments to the design if necessary.
As they work with and liaise with the landscaping team there is close consultation on everything so any issues can be quickly corrected as soon as they arrive.
This means you do not have to take on any type of “project manager” role.
You can just sit back, relax and watch your garden take shape.
Modern gardens are no longer just about decks, pools, paving and plants. They are far more sophisticated than that.
Alfresco dining areas with outdoor kitchens. Pergolas with roof heaters and automatic blinds and louvres that open and shut on command. Outdoor entertaining areas with sofas, big screen TVs, sound systems and more. Pools with spas, in-ground pool covers, sophisticated filtering systems, etc
All of these are now common in gardens. Which makes the design and construction of them a far more complex and demanding process.
This is one more reason to choose a ‘one-stop’ shop like Whyte Gardens. Because we liaise with ALL your external suppliers and trades throughout the entire project, handling it all from start to finish.
Plumbers, electricians, pool builders, pavers, outdoor kitchen installers, louvre installers – whatever is needed – we co-ordinate it all.
The end result is a beautifully designed garden, that is delivered on time and on budget, with very little stress or worry on your behalf.
For a little more understanding of how we do this, take a look at this video from me explaining how we did just that on this recent project in Balwyn.
If you'd like to know more about our fully integrated, design through to construction service, please read any of the following articles:
How to engage the right landscape designer in Melbourne
What should I ask a landscape architect or designer before I engage them?
Some things your Landscape Designer may not tell you
If we can be of any assistance with your new garden project, please feel free to call me direct, email us or set up a free consultation with one of our designers.
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