New Construction Landscaping, Allen Block Walls, What To Do With That Old Canoe

Designing, selling and installing landscaping for a newly constructed house is a huge undertaking, one that is full of challenges, stress, uncertainty and huge rewards. The process begins with a handshake and often ends with hugs. Imagine you meet someone who has just been through one of most stressful events of their lives, building a home. In our case often their dream lake home, and that home is perfect on the inside now they are on this beautiful lot over looking a lake and their yard is dirt, a dust bowl in the summer, a quagmire in the spring, no grass and the shade trees were removed to make room for the house, in addition to this the house was over budget and they are financially drained. Now comes the landscaper telling the them to expect between 5 and 15% of their total project cost be a ballpark of landscaping expense. That is for your everyday job, but people now want hot tubs, outdoor kitchens, fireplaces, big screen TVs, gazebos, arbors and exotic plants, oh and by the way all these things should be maintenance free.

For me this is a huge responsibility one that I take very serious. I am making decisions that will effect homeowners forever. Lets face it, changing the landscaping ain't moving furniture and painting walls, it is expensive, labor intensive and often out of the comfort zone of many homeowners. Listening is the key for me; trying to get to know people, their style, outdoor habits, needs, wants and don't wants, maintenance requirements, future plans and desires. Many customers have a difficult time articulating their needs because they are not familiar with plants and have trouble conceptualizing hardscape design or blueprints. Frankly, many times they have been exhausted by the building process and just want to see something "green."

Some designers like to impress their customers with fancy talk and 2D cad drawings, using botanical names and forcing styles that suite their current inventory. I do not operate that way, I like to meet on the site, get inside their house to see what they like, talk about pets, children, grandchildren, entertainment requirements, what they liked or did not like about their previous gardens. Proportion, transition, unity, balance, form, texture and rhythm are achieved more easily with a good understanding of your client and what they want. I like feeling in sync with my customers and exceed their expectations.

If I am lucky enough to be asked to do a drawing for someone I generally go to the site several times, take photos of all sides, do my first drawing a scaled site plan usually on 1/8 or 1/4" scale, note all existing objects (e.g. TV tower, driveway, existing trees), rough in my concept and get back to the shop and start to fine tune my concepts. I bring the customer to our shop and display gardens to pick out material and get a better feeling of their style. We look at various hardscape materials as needed and put it all together for a final presentation.

If all goes well and we get the job the fun just begins. We do our absolute best to stay on schedule but landscaping is weather sensitive, material dependent, labor intensive and about as darn hard as building a house, especially on some of the bigger projects. A big job may take several weeks and hundreds of labor hours. It is very personal and makes a lasting impression.

The job in these photos features Allen Block segmented retaining walls, snap cut staircase, glacial stone seawall, EZ block retaining walls, a great color pallet of plant material and the first canoe we ever planted. It was a challenging job with a 14' drop from the house to the lake in 70', we needed to get the steps in but try to squeeze in some landings (flat ground). The pictures are in process and I will post completed photos at a later