Hiring a landscape designer?

Hello all,

I'm in the process of buying my first house. (I don't even have a house picked out yet so I can't give any specifics on the yard.) I'm great with houseplants and containers but I'm a bit nervous about landscaping. Has anyone here ever hired a landscape designer? Any idea what it would cost? I have fibromyalgia and fatigue keeps me from doing everything I want to do with my garden. I can't do any heavy lifting and the thought of mowing a yard makes me want to take a nap. I got a good book from the library about low-maintainence gardening - things like using groundcover to minimize lawn and planting trees that aren't messy. It made me wonder if a landscape designer could make a custom design for a garden I could handle. OTOH, I've become a much better, diverse container gardener because of all the help here at DG, maybe I could hack it on my own. Cost is definetely a consideration - most of the cash is going towards the house. I'm planning on creating my ideal garden in phases over several years.

Any advice?

TIA,

Deirdre/TL

I used a landscape designer--unfortunately it was a few years ago and I can't remember what it cost just for the designer because I had the same company install some of the landscape too so all I remember is the total cost. I would see if any of your local nurseries offer design services--the cost for their services is usually less than if you hire an independent landscape designer but they should be capable enough to come up with a low maintenance garden plan for you. If you then buy some (or all) of your plants from that same nursery, you may also be able to get a discount on either the plants or the design fee.

I would also make sure you budget some money for help with landscaping--ultimately I think you can probably come up with a low maintenance garden that you can manage on your own, with just every once in a while having to hire someone to help you with things you can't do yourself. But between when you buy the house and when the whole new low-maintenance landscape is in, I have a feeling there are going to be some things you can't do yourself so you should budget some money to hire people to help you. You'll want to have some set aside for ripping out existing landscaping--only way to avoid that is if you're buying new construction and you tell them not to put anything in. But if you're buying an existing home, you're going to have to deal with existing landscaping that'll likely consist of a lawn that needs to be removed and probably some existing shrubs and trees that don't fit your needs, and since you can't do any heavy lifting I think managing the sod cutter to get the lawn out, ripping out shrubs, etc is going to be beyond what you can manage on your own. You may also want to budget some money to get someone to help you plant things--digging holes and planting things in the ground (especially if the plants are large) takes more effort than putting things in a container. And if you execute in stages, you may still need some help up front. Either there'll be leftover high-maintenance landscaping that needs to be taken care of until you're able to remove it, or if you get new construction with no landscaping or have all the old stuff ripped out but can't afford to put in all the new stuff right away, at the very least you'll need to get someone to help you mulch the areas you're not doing anything with yet, otherwise you will end up with a horrible mess of weeds to deal with.

I'll let DH know. ;)

I've had a landscape designer create a plan and then we planted most of it ourselves. Some won't work that way, but it sounds like you'd want them to plant anyway. It really depends on how much help the yard needs. If you're lucky you'll find a yard that has a good landscaping layout already, but justs needs some rejuvenation. That doesn't require as much skill and could be done by a local landscaping company for $25 to $40 per hour. Always shop around and look at what they have done-- is it creative? does it look natural?

It's usually a good idea to wait a year to see what comes up/blooms, where the sun is full/part, etc before making too many changes.

Make use of your library this winter - I took home stacks of gardening, landscaping books.

Take pictures of your house and yard to a local nursery. They should be able to suggest shrubs/plants that will work well in your zone.

This website has lots of good information: http://www.the-landscape-design-site.com/

I would agree. You could also use Google.com to look at what others have been doing online, give you some design ideas.

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