Landscape Designer Or Landscape Architect

What is the value of hiring landscape designers and landscape architects?
A competent landscape designer or landscape architect walks you through the entire landscape project, from development to design to installation. Using fundamental design principles, they take the vision in your head and make it real. In short, the best landscape designers and landscape architects can deliver a landscape design solution that flourishes in the Houston climate over the long term.

They can add value whether your project is a simple design that only encompasses landscape planting or is a complex technical undertaking. A true pro will reflect your unique style, as opposed to an off-the-shelf landscaping design program. Therefore, always ask to see a portfolio and visit the website to determine if the firm under consideration has a style you appreciate and is one that complements your home and lifestyle.

Additionally, we also recommend that you hire a landscaping design company that does project management and landscape maintenance as well as the design work. In other words, you want someone who not only has great ideas, but also knows the local contractors and their methods of construction, availability and best use of materials, overall cost and budget development, and can then maintain the finished product.

What is the first step in working with such professionals?
The initial consultation with landscape designers and landscape architects usually begins with a walk around your property. It hopefully becomes a two-way, free-flowing discussion covering your wants, needs and desires, including your likes and dislikes. We encourage our clients to be as specific as possible. After these meetings, the professional develops a program of uses that organizes areas by their relationship to one another.

What comes next?
Your design professionals use their findings to come up with a conceptual design that conveys the different elements, such as swimming pools and other hardscapes, drainage systems, lawn areas, and plantings. This phase winnows out the wish list items that are possible and those that are not. A cost study is usually developed at this point, too.

What about permits and regulations?
It is important to remember that each city has its own unique requirements for landscape plan approvals. Usually the permitting package is submitted to a committee board for approval or rejection. For this reason, it is important to hire a landscaping company that is experienced in these areas, one who knows what vital information to include and what unnecessary information to omit. Having a knowledgeable professional working for you helps you win approval as quickly as possible.

What can Exterior Worlds tell us about the implementation phase?
Once you have agreed on the overall design intent, sizes of use areas, general material selections and their applications, you are ready to begin the landscaping construction phase. Here landscape designers and landscape architects use their drawings and documentation that detail the existing site survey, elevation plan, tree disposition and tree preservation plan, demolition plan, swimming pool layout plan, irrigation systems, outdoor kitchens and outdoor water fountains, landscape planting plan, landscape lighting plan, and construction details and turn your visions into actualities.