Homeowners need to know what they are investing in when they hire a professional landscaping company.  Laborers need to know how to create forms that fulfill the expectations of homeowners, and contracted specialists need guidelines to follow when contributing their particular expertise to a project. 
A residential landscape plan makes all of this possible in the form of a simple, flexible document that everyone can understand follow. 

Such a plan provides the homeowner with a visual frame of reference that allows them to see exactly what their proposed landscape will consist of and where its many components will be located.  Homeowners can literally see in advance what they will be paying for, and they can make any necessary changes before any construction expenses are accrued.

This also creates an opportunity for extensive dialogue between the client and the landscape designer.  Homeowners are encouraged to bring ideas of their own to the table.  Verbal descriptions of landscape elements, digital photographs, printouts from the Internet, books, and magazines can all be added to the residential landscape plan and rendered to scale in our drafting software. 

Client inspiration and desire, then, is the raw material for the plan, and professional expertise is the refining force that transforms that raw material into new forms.

Homeowners usually bring superb ideas to the table when it comes to ideas of swimming pool patio and garden designs.  What they are often surprised to learn, however, is that hardscape design is much more than simply building patios around pools.  Patios, walkways, and other hardscapes can actually end up being 80 percent of the yard once the project is complete.  This is why our residential landscape plans always focus first on planning the dimensions and locations of hardscapes and outdoor architecture.

The inorganic elements of the residential design plan fit together like a frame around the outdoor living experience.  Within this frame, we can then add trees, gardens, shrubs, and decorative grasses to organic vitality to the landscape. 

The software that we use is designed specifically for our industry and allows us to create detailed representations of all hardscape and softscape elements.  Elements are drawn to scale so that relationships with other elements are properly represented.  Our professional crews that later create these forms have a ready-made plan available to follow that guides them through each step of the process.  Just as importantly, our management staff uses is as a general contractor guideline.

We have found that sticking to the residential landscape plan is the best way to manage relationships between Exterior Worlds and the many specialist contractors we often bring in for projects like driveway construction, driveway remodeling, swimming pool remodeling, swimming pool construction, and masonry elements.

When more than one such specialist is working for an Exterior World client, confusion and conflict can often arise if there is no comprehensive plan in place that will keep everyone on the same page. 

Contractors are required to follow the specifications of the residential landscape plan and work strictly within the parameters specified for the elements they are hired to construct.  They contribute their materials and expertise to building these features, but they do not alter the dimensions or design parameters of the structures already specified in the master plan.

This guarantees unity of design integrity regardless of how many layers of subcontractors we may need to involve in a particular landscaping project.