Garden design???

poochie2009

Hi all,
im building my house at the moment and i will have a lot of green area when im finished..very confused as what to do with it and has anyone any tips or recomendations?i would email them my plans if they wanted and also are garden or landscapers expensive?

Beruthiel

Are you not interested in doing it yourself?
I'd kill to have a large blank canvas to work on!

poochie2009

im intrested to do the work myself..i love gardening but id like to design it right so i dont make a mess of it..so much i could do with it that id like to be pointed in the right direction!

hippychippy

Depends on levels, area's, what you like/dislike???? Decks, patios, planting,????

monke

where abouts are you, i got a guy in to look at mine and he was great came out and looked around and gave me great ideas and done up a set of plans for me at a very good price and called back a few times free of charge to check on things. also gave me a couple of phone numbers for good and not to expensive landscapers. would be worth a call.

The Sweeper

Poochie you have a few choices:

1) Do nothing for a couple of years except try cutting the grass, and wait until your finances resurrect themselves once your house is built.
2) Hire a landscaper to do the entire job, including planting.
3) Hire a builder to do some physical features like decking and patio work, and handle the planting yourself.

I may come up against some protestors, but I think it's very important to make the distinction between a builder and a landscaper, or basically an earth works chap and someone who has a background in botany and horticulture.

Good landscapers are professionals who are qualified in things like botany and horticulture and also have the skills and knowledge to perform or subcontract 'works' in your garden as well as planting, and therefore will tackle any potential problems including garden drainage, areas of mid to heavy shade and proper soil preparation.

Good builders/earth workers are professionals who can lay an excellent deck or patio or build you a retaining wall but who may not fully understand soil preparation and may have a hit and miss approach to drainage works and an approach to planting that can cost you a small fortune - because the things they plant will die due to poor positioning, bad soil preparation and so on.

This board is full of people who have had poor experiences with both landscapers, who they feel overcharge, and builders, who they hire for what seems to be a more competitive price and who then make a dog's dinner of the planting aspect of the job.

If you're a keen gardener with some knowledge, consider doing your own garden design and then shop around for a good builder who'll do the 'feature' works for you - but beware of this approach if your garden is in any way problematic. If you have bogginess, sogginess or difficult soil (e.g. clay), you'll need the input of a professional to rectify these problems. Also beware of anything in your new garden that's warding off a problem (for instance, a friend of mine has a 30m mature willow tree in his back garden. He's committed to paying a tree surgeon to keep it healthy and also pruned every so often, as professional advice has pointed out that his mature willow tree is taking up a considerable amount of water every day, and without the tree, that'll have to go somewhere...)

Builders and earth works guys are NOT plant people. I recently hired an earth works guy to landscape my front garden, and he did a good job that I was pleased with, but I'm glad I didn't ask him to plant as well because I can tell by the condition of the soil it would have been a bad idea. (His finished remit was to add some mushroom compost to the soil as a soil improver - he did, but instead of mixing it, he raked it all neatly over the top of clay that was totally compacted from having his machinery run over it.) The planting aspect is my job and I'm tackling it myself - which is a slow process, but it also allows me to be happy that I'm putting plants that will suit my garden in in the right places.

Anyway - shop around, get some ideas, get a LOT of different quotes (two quotes is not 'a lot') and research into references and other people's experiences before you hire anyone to work in your garden.

old boy

plenty of research, do it a little at the time, enjoy yourself, and remember rome was not built in a day, look at o.p. gardens, take notes of them, have little plastic bags with damp tissue paper inside with you, handy for slips etc.

jobrok1

My advice would be to leave it for while.

Just get the house built. Sort out ALL your earthworks around the site before doing any kind of landscaping. This would include burying cables, ducting, pipes, drains, septic tank, sumps, etc. And keep note of where everything is buried.
After its all finished, just live with it for a while and plan it out before landscaping.

Sonnenblumen

There are many ways ranging from 'suck and see' through 'hit n miss' up to and including getting the professionals involved.

There are many advantages to retaining professionals for some if not all apsects of your project requirements. Wandering around the neighbourhood with a plastic bag to pull slips is not IMO the way to go to achieve a beautiful garden.

If your budget permits retaining consultants, there is plenty of evidence to prove that good advice pays dividends later on. The process of developing a new garden is a collaborative effort, and whilst I would agree that ideally you should first familiarise yourself with your new surroundings before embarking on a new landscaping project, quite often people are keen to move on sooner with getting the new design.

There should be no problems in identifying aspects of the work program that you can take responsibility for including planting etc. But start with a good plan from a professional and one who has a proven record in undertaking similar projects.

Finally, be realistic on budgets, I could write a book on how people have encountered problems trying to do things on the cheap and/or using cowboys.

Any project can be implemented on a phased basis. Talk is cheap and cheap work is very often the most expensive!

Good luck.