Have you just engaged a landscape designer or landscape architect to design your ideal garden? You might be wondering what your expectations should be.
With over 30 years experience designing gardens, we are well versed in helping our clients to set realistic expectations that can avoid misunderstandings.
We've written this article to give you a deeper understanding of how a design for a new garden develops through its various stages.
Once you understand the purpose of each stage, you'll know more about what to expect from them.
A few minutes spent reading this now, could help save hours of confusion or disappointment later on.
The first draft of your new garden concept design will be the first thing you see.
It will come after extensive discussions between yourself and your landscape designer/architect regarding your aspirations for your new garden.
Now those aspirations (or dreams) you have for your new garden might have been with you for a very long time. You may have looked at hundreds of gardens both in real life or photographic/video form. You may have a very strong yearning for this stunning new garden in your mind, and your heart. So this initial design presentation naturally carries with it your highest expectations.
So you are very likely to expect that when your designer presents your initial new garden concept design they will have 'nailed it'. You naturally assume they will be presenting a fully detailed, completed design, perfect in every way, with all your needs and wants met, all within an easily manageable budget.
We always aim for that too, but in reality, that's unlikely to happen.
Why? Because the Concept Design for your garden is an initial 'concept' only. It provides a broad brush vision for your new garden. It is NOT big on detail. And it comes with a range of yet to be resolved options that you and your designer will discuss, during the presentation.
Simply put, the purpose of Stage 1 - the Concept Design - is:
“To present you with a visual arrangement of all components, in proposed proportions, to help you envision the appearance of your new garden. It will incorporate elements you have highlighted and some we propose. This serves as a tangible depiction of your future garden, facilitating a more straightforward discussion about any modifications you desire."
At Whyte Gardens, when we present an initial Concept Design, we also offer a cost estimate to assist with budgeting, enabling you to understand the level of financial investment you are planning to undertake. The costs are 'high-level' costs based on experience and will be 'in the ball-park', but not finite or absolute.
Often these costs are based on suggestions that the designer has incorporated into the project. These suggestions are often expressed as the ideal scene for your garden. (Designers will tend to present you with the best potential version that your new garden could be, rather than just saying 'here are the cheapest options for everything'.)
But it's important you understand these are 'suggestions' and as the client you have the final say. They are put up as discussion points.
This is because your new garden design will incorporate many 'expected' elements you have already discussed with you designer, as well as additional ideas that your designer has come with up that were not previously discussed.
Because the Concept Design is a preliminary concept that will undergo further refinement.
When it comes to the initial cost estimate provided with the Concept Design, we can say that in our 30 years of experience, no client has ever remarked "Gee, that's a lot lower than I expected"!
Generally 1 in 4 of our clients will tend to be surprised at what their new garden might cost. Especially if they did a previous garden project a decade or more ago that 'only cost $200k', while the estimate for this new garden is around $320k. (Unfortunately costs always keep rising.)
We do design gardens to be the best versions of themselves and so we recommend that you anticipate a budget likely to be higher than you expected. But keep in mind, that this one of the many points we will discuss with you at this stage. As we get deeper into what you really need and want in your new garden, we can explore cost-reduction strategies together. For example, paving is often one of the most costly aspects of a project, but opting for honed concrete instead can reduce the expense by half as these examples show:
Applying baton tiling to the exterior of a pool, as shown here in this project in Greensborough, represented a premium finish that the client wanted, but it added significant extra costs.
The cost of paving the steps and the coping around a pool was much higher than using honed concrete as an alternative, which can generally be around half the price.
In this Balwyn North project, our landscape architect suggested honed concrete to help reduce the overall cost of the landscaping for this client.
We have been in touch with the family since installing this pool and they say they enjoy endless hours in it, making it a wonderful addition to their home. The use of concrete has not in any way diminished their enjoyment.
After you have been presented with the initial Concept Design for your new garden and discussed many aspects of it, including costings, you and your designer will now have an agreed list of revisions to be made.
Some will be about various aspects of the design that were on your wishlist but you would now like modified for whatever reason. Some will possibly be alterations to some of the new ideas your designer suggested. It may even include new ideas that came out of discussions that you now want to add to the garden.
And of course some revisions may be based on lowering the budget so it is more in line with your initial expectations. (Although often clients, once they see the vision for their new garden and understand what value it could represent to them, actually come around to signing off on a higher than expected estimate because they love what they have seen and really want it.)
In summary, this refinement of the first draft of the Concept Design has the following purpose:
"A Concept Design for your new garden that provides the exact layout of the garden, the inclusion of all desired elements, in a form where the anticipated budget can be achieved."
Ideally, this new revised Concept Design should now be able to be locked in as a more refined version of your intended future garden. From this, we should now be able to move to the next stage - the Master Plan!
Once you have agreed to and approved a Concept Design, it's time to develop it in more detail. This is the Master Plan stage.
Here is where we talk about the actual materials that will be used to build your garden, the actual plants the we will be planting, right down to their size and shape. It also details the finishes that will be applied to various elements in the garden, such as the areas around your pool, your deck, your outdoor kitchen, etc.
As with the initial Concept Design, this stage also includes your landscape designer or landscape architect suggesting various materials that they feel will suit your new garden environment and that will be to your liking. Again, being suggestions, they are open to discussion and revision.
Of course, they will also suggest plants that they believe will give your garden the exact feeling you are after.
But as always, both personal taste and practical considerations may apply. You may not like a particular material or suggested finish, even if it is the most suitable. You may have personal preferences for or against certain plants that sway your decision of what plants should be in your design.
The purpose of this stage is "A Master Plan that fulfils your wishes in terms of materials and plants, used as a conversational plan to help refine exactly how you wish your garden to be created."
A revised costing will also be presented at this stage since we now have actual plants and materials to cost for you.
At the previous review meeting, your designer would have discussed and noted what final changes were to be included in this final iteration.
Upon presenting this final Master Plan, you should now see your future garden fully detailed with all plants and materials selected.
You may have said, "I don't really like yellow-flowering Banksia". So we would have discussed alternatives in the prvious meeting and will now include in the revised Master Plan the agreed-upon plant you wished to replace the Banksia with.
Likewise, any materials or finishes that you wanted changed from the initial Master Plan will now be included in the final, revised version.
You should expect that this version of your Master Plan will be "the actual detailed design that clearly articulates the final vision you wish your garden to be."
It's interesting to note that this 4th stage is what some clients may expect to see at the 1st stage. But as you can clearly see, there is a journey of evolution we must go on together to end up with the perfect plan for the ideal garden you've been dreaming of.
Once we have an agreed-upon, fully completed Master Plan, we now enter the final planning phase of your new garden. This is where we contact an engineer, the council, a building surveyor, and/or specialists such as a pool company or outdoor kitchen installer, etc.
We gather together all we need to do the final, more exact, contractable costings and obtain any possible permits, and/or create the required working drawings.
You will receive a detailed quotation to carry out all these steps. Once these preliminaries are all completed, your landscaping can get underway, and work can begin on your new garden, for real!
We hope that you have found this article helpful in explaining the 4 key stages your garden design will go through to reach the final stage.
If you still have any unanswered questions, please don't hesitate to contact us by phone or email. We will be more than happy to answer them for you. Of course, if you have already engaged us and wish to contact Andrew directly about any aspect of your project, he would welcome your call or email.
You can reach us at our contact page
Or to start a conversation with us about your potential new garden project, just click here:
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