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lovingit

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Hi folks,

We are just starting our interviews for landscapers.  We met with Stefan from Jefferson Rand who is a designer.  What we like about them is that they have a architecture background and also knows the horticulture side of the house.  They are also a contracting company so it makes dealing with a designer and builder all in one.  I think they might be on the middle or the road to higher side in pricing.
I also met with Jesse Williams athttp://daydreamsdesign.net/who is an architect.  Pricing was $2500 for a drawing (not sure if that is considered expensive) but he got out of the contracting business so he would have to refer us to a contractor, or we find contractors to do the job ourselves.  He had nice ideas but almost seems like we will be doing more work finding a contractor after the fact.

Any other guys you recommend? 
 
We chose Studio H for the landscape design and Jessie Craven came up with a beautiful design.  The initial bids from contractors she recommended came in higher than our budget.  We didn't want to change the design elements and took the plans to a couple of contractors we knew, including one I've used previously.  Jessie also helped us to get her contractors to sharpen their bids.  Bottom line was that having a set of plans to competitively bid the prices gave us a lower price in the end (savings more than paid for landscape plans) and also the peace of mind that we were paying a fair price for the work being done.  We wouldn't have been able to bid out the work like we did if we had gone to a design and build firm.
 
Their fees are based on a percentage of expected build costs, so it will vary from project to project depending on the expected cost of the project.
 
irvine buyer said:
Their fees are based on a percentage of expected build costs, so it will vary from project to project depending on the expected cost of the project.
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What is the percentage
 
I've heard many positive experience from Studio H.

Many of small under $15k landscaping project probably not justify the extra expense for landscape architect.  However,  when your have large enough yard and budget to do something more substantial, hiring a landscape architect is a pretty good idea.

There's another good landscape design architect I've reading about is AMS Landscape Design Studios but I don't want to know how much they charge.  A lot of their project are between $200k to $500k.
 
I dont know anyone doing less than a 15k job these days.

I also dont believe it when contractors tell me drawings are free. No such thing as free work.  They just end up bidding up the costs in labor.
 
lovingit said:
I dont know anyone doing less than a 15k job these days.
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A lot of Irvine Pacific homes like Mulberry, Mendocino, Laurel, and Strada requires no more than $15k landscape job since most of them have very small back yard and the front yard are already done by the builder.  Some very simple back yard can even be done for around $10k or less. 
 
lovingit said:
I dont know anyone doing less than a 15k job these days.

I also dont believe it when contractors tell me drawings are free. No such thing as free work.  They just end up bidding up the costs in labor.
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Drawings are free if you go with them. It's not that complicated, for them to draw.
 
lnc said:
lovingit said:
I dont know anyone doing less than a 15k job these days.
Click to expand...

A lot of Irvine Pacific homes like Mulberry, Mendocino, Laurel, and Strada requires no more than $15k landscape job since most of them have very small back yard and the front yard are already done by the builder.  Some very simple back yard can even be done for around $10k or less.
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In a way you get what you pay for. Go read the previous stories on TI re: their back yard.
 
eyephone said:
lovingit said:
I dont know anyone doing less than a 15k job these days.

I also dont believe it when contractors tell me drawings are free. No such thing as free work.  They just end up bidding up the costs in labor.
Click to expand...

Drawings are free if you go with them. It's not that complicated, for them to draw.
Click to expand...

Drawings are free? You get what you pay for.

I used a landscape architect (Warwick from Studio H) for my new home, and wouldn't think about doing it any other way in the future. It's quite obvious which homes in our neighborhood used landscape architects and which just went with a contractor. I think that landscape architects should be used for all homes, but I'd argue that for a small lot it's even more important, since you'd want to extract as much beauty and use out of your landscape in a small yard.
 
I agree. Hire a landscape architect. Or hire a company that has an in-house architect of sorts. 
 
NYT said:
eyephone said:
lovingit said:
I dont know anyone doing less than a 15k job these days.

I also dont believe it when contractors tell me drawings are free. No such thing as free work.  They just end up bidding up the costs in labor.
Click to expand...

Drawings are free if you go with them. It's not that complicated, for them to draw.
Click to expand...

Drawings are free? You get what you pay for.

I used a landscape architect (Warwick from Studio H) for my new home, and wouldn't think about doing it any other way in the future. It's quite obvious which homes in our neighborhood used landscape architects and which just went with a contractor. I think that landscape architects should be used for all homes, but I'd argue that for a small lot it's even more important, since you'd want to extract as much beauty and use out of your landscape in a small yard.
Click to expand...

It all depends. I think in a way, for you to pass judgment for those people who didn't use an architect is not fair. You can't use your experience and conclude that is the way to go for everybody.

I mean it's up to the homeowner to do their own research. (Read reviews, ask for reference, ask to see previous projects, etc..) 


 
eyephone said:
NYT said:
eyephone said:
lovingit said:
I dont know anyone doing less than a 15k job these days.

I also dont believe it when contractors tell me drawings are free. No such thing as free work.  They just end up bidding up the costs in labor.
Click to expand...

Drawings are free if you go with them. It's not that complicated, for them to draw.
Click to expand...

Drawings are free? You get what you pay for.

I used a landscape architect (Warwick from Studio H) for my new home, and wouldn't think about doing it any other way in the future. It's quite obvious which homes in our neighborhood used landscape architects and which just went with a contractor. I think that landscape architects should be used for all homes, but I'd argue that for a small lot it's even more important, since you'd want to extract as much beauty and use out of your landscape in a small yard.
Click to expand...

It all depends. I think in a way, for you to pass judgment for those people who didn't use an architect is not fair. You can't use your experience and conclude that is the way to go for everybody.

I mean it's up to the homeowner to do their own research. (Read reviews, ask for reference, ask to see previous projects, etc..)
Click to expand...

I go back to my original assertion that you get what you pay for. You cannot tell me that a contractor without any landscape architect education is going to give you the same result as a licensed landscape architect. True, someone might be completely OK with what a contractor offers them. But an objective outside observer with any appreciation of a landscape can tell the difference between the ho-hum contractor landscape and one designed by a landscape architect.
 
NYT said:
I go back to my original assertion that you get what you pay for. You cannot tell me that a contractor without any landscape architect education is going to give you the same result as a licensed landscape architect. True, someone might be completely OK with what a contractor offers them. But an objective outside observer with any appreciation of a landscape can tell the difference between the ho-hum contractor landscape and one designed by a landscape architect.
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Design is subjective.  Having a landscape architect doesn't automatically mean better.  There are many model homes with pro backyards that look ok and many that look amazing.  In these cookie cutter neighborhoods, isn't it cheaper to just look at the models and use one as a template for your design?  Perhaps my eyes are too simple to understand the real beauty but paying a few thousand for design seems very expensive, esp when there are so many ready made templates to pick from by just touring the vast number of model houses in Irvine.
 
Design is definitely subjective but what's up with all the mismatching materials?  If you are building walls or pilasters, how hard can it be to paint it to match your stucco or use the right color stone and grout color. And some of the concrete color choices are pretty bad. Salmon color?  Orangeish?  When your house has none of those colors in it?  Not sure if these are homeowner issues or contractor execution issues.  If it's a homeowner issue, then they coulda used the help of a landscape architect.
 
bones said:
Design is definitely subjective but what's up with all the mismatching materials?  If you are building walls or pilasters, how hard can it be to paint it to match your stucco or use the right color stone and grout color. And some of the concrete color choices are pretty bad. Salmon color?  Orangeish?  When your house has none of those colors in it?  Not sure if these are homeowner issues or contractor execution issues.  If it's a homeowner issue, then they coulda used the help of a landscape architect.
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So true bones, so true. It's almost as if some homes had planned for a nice looking brick, for example, to match the rest of their home. But then when it came to paying for it, there was a special a hideous colored brick, and they decided to go for that instead to save a few bucks even though it doesn't match anything else on the house or even in the neighborhood. At least that's the only explanation I can think of when I see some of these horribly mis-matched colors/materials.
 
From what I've seen and heard, there's a couple reasons for all the mismatchy-ness.
1) some homeowners are hell bent on using a certain material (travertine is the one of choice these days) regardless of what their house exterior looks like but don't have the expertise to include it in a non-mismatchy way.
2) some are copying another neighbor's design even though it doesn't suit their front yard layout.  Sometimes this is driven by the contractor with the free plans. They just want to rinse and repeat previous work.
3) some just don't understand all the intricacies of all the different components and now it all links together. Although I see a lot of contractors just using prefab steps and caps these days so that does help.
4) some are tying to save a few bucks like you mentioned.  I always scratch my head on this one too.  You're already doing the project. Cut something else from the project to make the remaining parts match!

This is why I'm also for a landscape architect. They can help with a lot of things. It's not just hardscape either. It's also the overall layout, the softscape, lighting, etc.

Didn't we read about some guy on TI who had to redo his yard not too long after bc it was overgrown and all sorts of messed up. He prob could have avoided that by hiring a landscape architect to begin with. In the end, prob would have spent the same money but avoided the headache of a partial yard redo.

 
bones said:
From what I've seen and heard, there's a couple reasons for all the mismatchy-ness.
1) some homeowners are hell bent on using a certain material (travertine is the one of choice these days) regardless of what their house exterior looks like but don't have the expertise to include it in a non-mismatchy way.
2) some are copying another neighbor's design even though it doesn't suit their front yard layout.  Sometimes this is driven by the contractor with the free plans. They just want to rinse and repeat previous work.
3) some just don't understand all the intricacies of all the different components and now it all links together. Although I see a lot of contractors just using prefab steps and caps these days so that does help.
4) some are tying to save a few bucks like you mentioned.  I always scratch my head on this one too.  You're already doing the project. Cut something else from the project to make the remaining parts match!

This is why I'm also for a landscape architect. They can help with a lot of things. It's not just hardscape either. It's also the overall layout, the softscape, lighting, etc.

Didn't we read about some guy on TI who had to redo his yard not too long after bc it was overgrown and all sorts of messed up. He prob could have avoided that by hiring a landscape architect to begin with. In the end, prob would have spent the same money but avoided the headache of a partial yard redo.
Click to expand...

Correct me if I'm wrong, I "believe" the main reason is because that person was not licensed by the state. #notdroppinNames
 
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