The process of meeting with a new client, assessing a site, preliminary sketches, revisions and final design takes time – normally weeks, depending on the scale of the project. Typically, potential clients get the “bug” for a landscape project as the weather warms in March and are ready to see dirt moved the next day. Now is the time to plan ahead for the spring and take the appropriate time required for a well planned out project that is “shovel ready” when spring rolls around.  What this usually entails is a discussion with your partner (or yourself) on exactly what the project is to encompass before you contact a designer. On the first contact call, I ask the potential client if they have any magazine photo’s, lists of requirements, or a written scope of work prepared prior to the first client meeting so that I have a firm idea what it is I am being asked to perform.

Since time is always about money, it is beneficial to have a client organized and prepared for the meeting and it normally helps a client think the project through, edit the “fluff” and expand on the important, prior to our meeting. We will go through all of your “homework” at that meeting and I have a list of questions for the interview to fill in the details. We will walk the site together, look at drainage, screening issues, visual site lines, and discuss in depth project expectations. Following that meeting, I will gather site information, measure, and then go to the desk and begin sketching.

Normally a preliminary draft will be presented to the client along with pricing information so that everyone is on the same page with both design and financial information. At that meeting, notes will be taken as to how to “tweak” the design to exactly meet the client’s needs and expectations and how to meet their budgetary considerations by choosing material selections that fit in the budget or deciding how to phase the project. A second round at the drafting table and calculator and then another client meeting before the project is “shovel ready”.

This all takes time and these next two months present a great opportunity to take the necessary time required to make sure that your project has had the required time to sink in and be just what you had hoped for.

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