Landscape Plans for Town Planning permits - how to avoid the most common mistake

Are you planning to build a new home? Has council (or someone else) told you "you will have to submit a Landscape Plan before your Town Planning Permit will be approved"? 

After 30+ years in the landscaping business we've had dozens of our clients tell us they need a "Landscape Plan for Town Planning" often done quickly so as not to hold up the building of their new home.

In this article we'd like to help you understand how this approach can lead to problems for first time builders. And why the Landscape Plan you create for council permit approval is not a Landscape Plan you can use to actually create your garden from.

If this seems confusing, it is, so we hope by the time you finish this article you understand the traps for the unwary and how to overcome them.

A typical Landscape Plan for council:

Specifications for a Landscape plan for Town Planning purpose.

Above is a typical Landscape Plan that has been created for a client to give to their local council in order to receive their Town Planning permit so they can progress with building their new home. 

(Not all councils will ask for a Landscape Plan as part of the Town Planning Permit application process but many do.)

Note that it is very short on detail. What timber is the deck made from? How big are the "paving stones"? What sort of trees are being planted? How high is the fence? What is it made of?

The trap for many is that they think they can now give this Landscape Plan to a landscaper for the purpose of quoting to actually create the garden. And this is where the trouble starts.

It all centres around the word - purpose.

How landscape plans differ

A Landscape Plan created for the purpose of getting council approval is not the same as a Landscape Plan created for the purpose of actually creating a garden.

The first is a conceptual plan only to give the council an idea of what they key elements of the garden will be and how they will be laid out. It's an "overview" only that exists so you can start building your home.

But it's a far cry from an actual Landscape Master Plan.

An actual Landscape Master Plan is a fully detailed design for a garden that includes all garden features, materials, plants, finishes etc included so that you, the client can visualise exactly how your future garden will look. It is created so that you will know this is actually the garden you want and it has enough detail in it so that a landscaping quotation can be created from it.

Here is an example of part of a Landscape Master Plan. Note the detail in it.

In many cases, a Master Plan may require further detailing to allow more accurate costings to be made - eg an engineer needs to specify details or construction methods for one or more of the garden components. (Generally these may not be included until the Working Drawing stage which comes next, however a costing that's around 95% accurate can be created from the Master Plan.)

Now a Landscape Master Plan can be modified to use as a Landscape plan for Town Planning Permit purposes. But a Landscape Plan created to be used for Town Planning purposes only, will be insufficient later on when the time comes to quote the garden as there is simply not enough detail in it, compared to the Master Plan.

The challenge of time

Often the reason this whole issue becomes a problem is that people can go to a landscape designer with serious time pressures because they've just found out they can't get permission to start building their new home without the Landscape Plan.

So they ask for a "quick landscape plan" to be created so they can get the council permit approval. This can be done if necessary in a week or two.

However to do a full, complete, proper Landscape Master Plan can take 2 months or more. Because it's being created for the purpose of actually creating a garden from it.

To create this Landscape Master Plan we would:

• meet with the client and get a brief overview of their garden plans
• visit the site and take accurate measurements
• have a design consultation with a more detailed brief for their garden including everything on their wishlist
• develop a concept design for the garden incorporating all elements
• present the concept design to the client and discuss/review changes
• make the changes to the concept design and represent
• get approval for the concept design to go to the detailed Landscape Master Plan stage
• present the Master Plan and get final revisions and/or approval.

You can probably understand how someone stressing to get their Town Planning permit approved so they can commence building their new home may often not want to wait 2 months to get a fully detailed Landscape Master Plan done first.

And then have to wait a couple more days in order to extract a simplified Landscape Plan from the Master Plan to present to council.

How people get themselves into trouble

As both a landscaping company who constructs gardens and a landscape design company we do a lot of work for clients where we take the whole project from concept to construction.

But we also have clients who come to us with a landscape design and ask us to quote it for them so that we can construct it for them.

When we receive a 'Landscape Plan' from a client that was created for the purpose of getting a council town planning permit, it can be difficult to explain to the client that we can't quote from it. 

We have to ask a lot of questions in order to start quoting. Questions like: 

• What type of concrete did you want for the driveway?
• What decking timber are you considering?
• What variety of grass did you want for the lawn?
• What kind of stepping stones did you have in mind?
• Is the shed included in the landscaping or is the builder doing it?
• What finish did you want on the front porch?

Things can get complex when these are the answers we receive:

• What type of concrete did you want for the driveway? Coloured
• What decking are you considering? Timber
• What variety of grass did you want for the lawn? Any
• What kind of stepping stones did you have in mind? Sandstone
• Is the shed included in the landscaping or is the builder doing it? Don't know
• What finish did you want on the front porch? Tile or stone
• Are there any fenceworks? Yes
• Were you wanting to include gates down the side? If so, what type? Yes need side gate

As you could well imagine we couldn't actually quote from these answers!

No one wants to hear this about their landscape plan -  ‘The approved Town Plan is inadequate and we need to re-draw it with full details gathered from an onsite visit by our designer'.

Sometimes the client will become so frustrated by this process they will try to work around the problem by hiring a landscaper who volunteers to hold the ‘Designer Hat’ and help detail it all. It is extremely messy and easily avoided if the process is followed; design a fully detailed plan. The landscaper (who may have experience but is not a designer) tends to suggest the simplest approach and what they prefer to build.

How can I avoid making this messy mistake?

When you engage a designer to create a plan to be used in your Town Plan submission, create a plan that is also valuable for costing purposes when you need to obtain a landscape quotation.

Stating ‘timber deck’ as in the landscape plan above, does not allow a cost to be calculated. Detailed descriptions such as: ‘Spotted Gum decking using 86 x 19mm boards’ allows a cost to be calculated. It is rather lazy to go to all that effort to create a design and not ask the client, “Would you like spotted gum timber in 86mm wide boards?”

So, why do so many designers do it?

I am not here to cast judgement on that, but certainly Landscape Plans tend to be created at a low price (perhaps you might see why now) and this may be appealing.

I have heard over the years people say, “Oh, I just need to make council happy and get my permit, we won’t do that design and will engage a designer later to create what we really want.” Be extremely wary!

I had a client last year, that when we wanted to extend the height of a simple paling fence on a new-build site, the building surveyor turned around and said, “Sorry, but council said you have to amend the Town Plan for that and it will take four months" (which it did).

There are so many horror stories I could share, but I hope the above is enough to make you place importance on getting a design right from the start. Do not rely on hearsay. Get reliable facts. Take the time to get your design right. This includes getting it fully detailed. I hope this information is of value in directing how you may select a designer for your new home planning stage.