Be Weary the Online Landscape "Designers"

For the past five years or so, we have been running into clients who present us with designs they bought online for their landscaping projects. They call us searching for an installing contractor. We seldom have good news for them.  

Before you pay for an online landscape design, please allow us to caution you about what you are buying. You are undoubtedly being over-charged. Any so-called design can only be used for inspiration (so can a free photograph!). These “designs” cannot be used to install real world projects. For that you need an architectural design drawn to scale by someone who has actually visited the site. This cannot be stressed enough. Set aside any discrepancies one might have in personal taste regarding what these companies produce, because personal design taste is irrelevant here. Designs purchased from any online landscape “designer” are completely worthless when it comes to installing a landscape project.

We cannot tell you how many times someone has reached out after having hired an online “landscape design” company only to discover the landscape design they have paid for isn’t installable.

Typically, these online outfits form-fit your property using an application that coincides with Google Earth. They don’t visit the sight to double check their measurements for accuracy. [Keep in mind 80% of landscape components are calculated by the sq ft.] They begin with inaccurate measurements then proceed with their application to “draw” a 3D rendering that takes a total of 20 minutes to put together. Very little thought goes into these. We have seen dozens that look nearly identical!

A 3D “drawing” is useless to the installing contractor because we cannot accurately determine from a 3D picture how many square feet of lawn, bark, rock, concrete, water feature, arbor, etc. are required. If that information isn’t accurate then we cannot determine correctly the lighting, plants, irrigation, etc. that is required. Not to mention the inability to accurately measure what’s there now and what quantities of what need to be removed, what can be re-used, etc. because there aren’t any notes or real photos!

Once their rendering is submitted, they tell the client that a local contractor can take them the rest of the way. What they don’t tell you is that the installing contractor has to start from scratch because the online company hasn’t collected any useful information about the jobsite (they’ve never been there). Again, their measurements are either incomplete, or just wrong, and their 3D “drawing” cannot be used for a take-off to calculate what the job will cost because it hasn’t been drawn the way an architectural plan is drawn. The installing contractor then has to re-measure, re-draw so they can do an accurate take-off and present you with an accurate proposal. But they aren’t going to put this many hours in free of charge.

You paid the online company. But what you’ve bought is useless. You cannot get a refund because they claim you got what you paid for, and they’re on to the next unassuming client looking for home improvement.

Online “Designers” are Carpetbaggers who Produce Rubbish!

They aren’t visiting the sight to make suggestions as to what should stay existing versus what should be removed. They aren’t taking into account the direction of the sun, wind patterns the client may wish to break, shade concerns, or privacy issues. They aren’t soliciting the kind of information from their clients that can only be gotten by a one-on-one conversation taken in the very space you wish to transform. Not to mention the quality of their designs are elemental at best. To be perfectly blunt, more often than not they generate utter crap: hum drum geometric boxed-in designs devoid of curves or character. Something you might find in the middle of the last century. Even if you like what they produce: it cannot be installed without starting over.

While color, 3D pictures may be pretty to look at, copying and pasting images of trees and bushes to “doll up the presentation” from an application using very little forethought does not make a landscape design.

Don’t be fooled. Sit down with a professional designer who installs landscape designs for a living. Meet with someone who knows what will work and what won’t. Get to know the person. Have them listen to your needs and wants and help you make your landscape and extension of your home.