I need a landscape designer

I am about a one hour drive from Gainesville Fl and need professional help. Can anyone recommend an experienced advisor?
Thanks

One of the best ways to finding good landscaping ideas is to look at magazines which deal with this area of gardening. You can also get lots of ideas for a great looking garden from exhibitions which are sponsored by landscaping firms. As these places are always on the lookout for new clients they will have the most current ideas and trends featured in their exhibitions.

Go on line and look for professional landscape artists for your area, these will be expensive as they are fully qualified both in design and horticultural skills but, their sites normally show gardens they have recently worked on and this will give you ideas of just what they can do, you can then move onto either asking them for advice or go to the larger gardening center where they will have a list of companies who do this type of work, draw plans and give planting ideas for easy care, just flower beds or mixed plantings of tree's, shrub's and flowers, they will come to your home and discuss what you want, go away and return with ideas, costs, and care after the garden is landscaped.
The other way to go is to take your time and have a go yourself, if you have the time and even a little garden knowledge you can design yourself, it's fun and not as difficult as you think.
My method for that is to take a pic of the house, front / side / back etc, get the pic blown up to much larger size the place the pic under a sheet of either greaseproof paper or buy some tracing paper, then use soft pencil (you can rub out soft pencil easy) draw all the hard landscape you want to be done like pathways, parking areas, play area if needed, garage run etc, remember to mark cables, drains and all fixtures that are already there, trees too if any.
Then the fun begins, you draw beds / borders arches, lighting, patios etc, go outside and lay the garden hose into the shape you fancy and then go inside to look out the window onto the shape / size etc, you then go back and change what your not happy with like, too fancy, too long, too narrow etc, will it block exit / entry to the roadway, this is all the fun stuff, then go around gardens for ideas to plant out your plot, get your soil tested in several areas as most gardens have a mixture of soil types, this will help what kind of plants you can or cant grow. Then have fun with coloured pencils drawing in the colour schemes you want matching your plant choice, it could take you the whole winter to do this and many visits to the library for books on garden plants, landscapes ideas etc and believe me on my many visits to USA your libraries are full of books for all stages of knowledge for gardening, also book stores where you can have a coffee, take your note book and sit out of the cool days and take notes of the books they have. this is a great winter project and by using tracing paper you can just start again if your plans have gone wrong. anyway I have just touched on some of the ways to go.
The last or most important thing is budget, you could ask a company to just landscape a bit at a time and you do the planting yourself from the landscape list, or get front done, next year after learning how to look after that, you get them back for the next area, this is a costly job when you start using professionals but you also need to ask them to show you actual work they have done, not just pictures but go look at the actual garden and if possible chat to the owners.
Do remember recommendation is normally the best means of advertising, BUT what one person is happy with could be completely the opposite to your needs, so go get lots of different people in to discuss your needs, budget and timescale.
You have to live with this for a long time and it is worth asking how large tree's etc will reach in 10 years etc, you don't want to be living in total darkness because of trees and you need to think about the neighbours light and shade too, theres nothing worse that a neighbours fight over trees, shade etc, I always think, would I want to have this happen to me, there are several ways to get privacy without destroying next doors environment to get it, there are also lots of ways to block out an eyesore that wont upset the next people who move in and have forest size trees causing their house to crumble and you end up paying to fix the problem.
Hope this helps you out and just have fun, do your research and costings, get everything in writing as you cant go back once the works done, and argue about stuff IF it is not in writing first of all. Take your time and you will end up with your dream garden. best wishes and good luck. Weenel.

All good ideas above. Another might be to post this query on the Florida Gardening forum, some folks there might have some thoughts for you.

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/f/region_fl/all/