How This All Works

Before you begin any landscape project, you must first determine your budget. How much are you willing to spend, and how far do you expect that money to go? We are aware that landscaping is rarely a Need (unless we’re talking health and safety erosion control, tree removal, etc). Landscaping is more like a Want. You want your yard to look nice. You want your yard to be safe. You want your property value to increase. You want to be able to come home each day and enjoy the rather considerable investment you have in your home, rather than cringe each day at the environmental disaster you call a yard. So often we hear “I can’t stand it! Come do something with my yard! Quick!” followed shortly by “You’re kidding, right? It costs HOW much?????” Only you have the ability to determine a responsible balance between how much “I Can’t Stand” you have to match against “I Want” offset by “I Can’t Pay”, thus setting your personal realistic budget. And yes, when you balance three factors against one another, there will be compromises to be made. That also is important for you to realize early on in the landscape budgetary process.

To guide you along, two workers + materials runs about $1,000 per day. A small crew of 4-5 workers + materials runs about $10,000 per week. Two crews on your jobsite, with equipment and materials, typically runs about $25,000 per week. If you have chosen extremely expensive materials, consider upwards of doubling those figures. Most of our cleanups cost $2,000 to $3,000.  A small yard cleanup and softscape replanting runs approximately $5,000 for the project. That same yard with hardscaping (new patio, an arbor, some paths, gopher wire, irrigation, etc) will cost approximately $30,000 for the project. A built –in firepit is $6,000. A complete outdoor kitchen will hit you $50,000 rather easily, with stainless grill, side burners, sink, hot water, garbage disposal, refrigerator, lighting, granite countertops, roof structure, etc etc. Smaller residential installation jobs run $10,000 to $30,000. The majority of our work falls in the medium to large residential project range of $150,000 to $500,000, and we install one or two larger estate projects each year in the $1 million to $2 million bracket. Yes, on landscaping.

Here’s a refreshingly honest conversation from a client, regarding budgets, goals, and communication that I just had to share, it’s perfect:

“Hey Jerry, I’ve reviewed the proposal and discussed with my wife, and here are our thoughts: 

• This home is not our forever house, we only plan on being here for another 4-5 years.
• The proposal as outlined by you is a significant investment that we don’t think we’ll be able to recoup when we sell the house, due to the short timeframe.
• In our minds, we tentatively budgeted more like $40k-$50k for the backyard, knowing that amount of money could be recouped when we sell the house.
• I like you and the way you do business, however I’m worried our budget isn’t compatible with the quality of work you provide.

Now that we’ve seen the true cost to build the yard we envisioned, adjustments will need to be made.  Here are the changes I’d like to make:

• Remove the planter boxes:  If the stamped concrete patio were to leave open dirt in the ground where the planters were to be built we can plant directly into the ground.
• Fence:  I can handle the demo and rebuild of the fence myself.
• Synthetic Turf:  I can install the turf at a later date.
• Planting:  I can do the planting at a later date.         
• Landscape Lighting:  I can do the lightning at a later date.

What I really need are the demo, site prep, concrete and patio – mainly just the frame and hardscapes so I can fill in the other parts as time and budget allow.  I know this is a significant departure from your original plan so I understand if you’d like to decline our project, however I wanted to be honest with you from the beginning with our thoughts and budget so you can see if a revised proposal makes sense.

Let me know how you feel whenever it’s convenient.  Thanks for your help.”

Much thanks to all open, upfront, honest clients.  You make our day!

Still reading? Ok, good. You have a budget in mind, you have lots of ideas, you now need help seeing if your ideas match your budget. That’s what we do, match maximum return in landscape value for minimal monetary investment.

It begins with a phone call to us.

Give us your address so we can look up satellite images of your property.

Explain your landscape ideas. Express your dreams and desires. Tell us your constraints. Share your priorities. Set your budget.

We’ll do the rest.

When you call us interested in discussing landscape ideas for your project, we will do one of two things, depending on the scope and complexity of your inquiry.

Firstly, if you catch us in the office, we can pull up a satellite view of your property on Google Earth (we have the Professional Version) and over the phone spend some time with you discussing your ideas, feasability, costs, and offer suggestions on how to proceed, without you ever leaving your home or us leaving our comfortable office chairs. We can often follow up that initial phone call with an emailed landscape Budgetary Proposal, a photoshop Virtual Before & After Design Image, or simply a list of contact Referrals for work we don’t think we want to do. We consider the initial phone call a screening process to see if our company may be a good match for your needs. Ask us as many questions as you wish at this time to also see for yourself if we offer the services you seek.

Secondly, if a site visit seems appropriate, we will follow up that initial phone call with a physical drive to your property to meet you in person. Typically we will listen politely to your ideas, throw out some ideas of our own, then spend some time wandering around your yard with you. We will tour your property, mumbling to ourselves, taking furious notes, asking endless stupid questions, taking photographs, while concurrently waving our hands in the air and dragging our feet in the dirt and rambling on about elevations, drainage, compressive strength of concrete, air speed of an African swallow (both with and without coconut), etc, etc. Our goal at this meeting is a simple exchange of ideas, discuss feasibility, budgets, expectations, and how we think your goals may be met, all within an hour or so on-site. As with the initial phone call, we may follow up with a Budgetary Proposal, a Virtual Before & After, or a Referral to someone else.

Up to this point, your monetary commitment is little to none. We consider the exchange of simple concepts free, and are more than happy to discuss ideas over the phone. A drive to your property occupies both our time and yours, and also is free.

Please be clear that we will not design your yard for free, we will not cost estimate your free design, we will not give you a free list of time and materials and construction procedures for your free design, we will not freely supervise your friends installing your free design, that’s what we’re in business for. We will, however, freely discuss feasibility, budgets, and processes of your landscape intentions during our initial free Meet & Greet.

We may determine, after the initial Meet & Greet, that you need a design. Something printed, on paper, drawn out, layed out, specified, detailed, solid, that everyone can visualize from and discuss and debate and ultimately agree upon. That design may take several forms, and we always view the design process as separate from any estimating or construction contracts we may enter into later.

Digital Renderings: Commonly referred to as “photoshop,” we have the ability to take a digital image of your property, remove unwanted features, and overlay new landscape elements, creating a virtual Before & After series of images. This process takes a few hours per image, and we typically charge $100 per image. Our Design page has quite a few examples of this process for your consideration.

Hand Drawn Scribbles on Paper: While I myself can’t hand draw to save my life, we do have one Designer who only draws by hand. She charges $100 / hour, her work is excellent, and within a few hours she may be able to produce a quick bubble sketch conceptual plan of your landscape layout ideas. This might not be accurate enough to estimate exact costs, but it may aid you in visualizing your thoughts and sharing your vision with others. Using Google Earth to trace over a satellite image of your property usually provides a sufficient enough base map to serve as a foundation for her designs.

Base Map: Where more accuracy is desired, or where more complicated site conditions warrant (multiple elevation changes, for example), we need an accurate base map of existing conditions prior to design. We do offer in-house base map survey services, not a “legal survey” for property line debate purposes, but a survey of site conditions and feature locations. Where’s the house? Where’s the fence? Where are the trees? How far between the garage and the street? Using laser survey equipment (same stuff seen on the side of the road used by survey crews), within a few hours on-site and a few hours in the office, we can produce an extremely accurate digital base map in AutoCAD, ready for hand or digital design. Costs typically range from $500 to $1,000 to produce a single residence base map. Refer to our Design Offer page to view an example.

Digital Design: We use AutoCAD and a host of add-on design programs to create landscape blueprints, as simple or as detailed and complex as you may need. We can do anything from a single sheet, showing hardscape layout and plant selection combined, to multiple separate sheets for hardscape, planting, irrigation, lighting, details, etc etc. We also produce plan sets for County permitting and submittal, which are always multi-sheet and very detailed. Costs typically run around $500 to $1,000 for the base map (see above), then around $200 to $300 per design sheet, depending on complexity. We charge $100 / hr for design time, and you can start or stop at any time along the process. If you request multiple revisions, your cost will increase. If you are satisfied with the first draft, your costs will be minimal. It’s up to you. A representative small residential back yard may run $700 total for base map and design, while front, back and two side yards may run $1,500 total or more. A full County set of pool construction plans, with engineering, may run upwards of $6,000 with multiple plan sheet duplication.

Our designers intend to get your mental thoughts into a paper form that can be easily shared with others, the intent being that you will share them with others. This includes providing your photos, blueprints, etc to other contractors for estimating and construction purposes. If you pay us for a design, that design is yours, you own it, with no further obligation to us for any reason. We would of course, as a courtesy, love to provide you with a Budgetary Proposal cost estimate of installation and have you consider us for the work, but you are in no way required to get an estimate from us or have us do any further work for you. Again, the design process is separate from the construction process, but we hope that at least you accept a Proposal from us for consideration.

A proposal is the business end of landscaping, where dollars meet the dirt. What would you do with one million dollars? Landscape your yard, you say? We can help you with that. Or perhaps just one thousand dollars? Either way, everyone has a budget, and the purpose of a Budgetary Proposal is to answer the question “How much will this cost me?” We’ve done work ranging from several hundred dollars to several million dollars on a single residential landscape, so not much is outside our scope or area of expertise and experience. If you have a set of existing landscape plans, and they are detailed enough for us to do an accurate take-off, we will happily provide you with a very detailed spreadsheet of material quantities and cost estimates to install. We live for Excel spreadsheets, everything in neat little black and white boxes, very precise and OCD and accurate. Even if you don’t have a detailed blueprint to start with, if our mutual ideas are solid and detailed enough, we can often create a fairly accurate Budget based on our initial Meet & Greet and some site measurements and verifications. We provide this estimating service free of charge, as long as you provide us with details we can measure and provide us with your budget.

Please note that without your conceived budget, we are wasting both your time and our time pricing a project that conceptually maybe ten times what you are willing to spend, and we don’t have time to waste. If you have a $5k budget and $50k ideas, we can tell you that in about 30 seconds, without wasting 3 hours in front of our spreadsheets and digitizers. Often times people have “no idea” what landscaping will cost, that’s why they call us to get a “free estimate”. That is perfectly understandable, as (thankfully) not everyone is an expert landscape contractor. You do, however, have a very clear idea of how much you’re willing to spend, at least in a budgetary range ($5k? $50k? $500k? $1.5mil? $2.5mil?). We honestly don’t care how much you have to spend, everyone has a budget. Our goal is to manage and meet your expectations, which requires us to match your landscape desires with your landscape dollars. Otherwise, you are disappointed and we’ve wasted quite a lot of our time and yours building up your hopes only to dash your dreams. We would rather work on full honesty, both ways, up front, from the beginning. If you can landscape for less than your budget, congratulations, enjoy early retirement on the savings. If your landscape exceeds your budget, great, consider doing work in phases or reducing your scope. Either way, our Budgetary Proposal will clearly tell you how much dirt you get for your dollars, free of charge.

We do understand that not all people are comfortable providing their budgetary expectations, fearing that we will simply inflate our prices in order to spend every penny you have. Honestly, that’s too much work changing our prices for every client we have, and it’s not fair to anyone. We’ve seen other contractors do that, unfortunately, so please understand that this is not an unreasonable fear. We typically see this behavior in “young pups” fresh out of landscaping school, and fortunately they don’t stay in business for long. We’ve been doing this for over 40 years, in the same small community where everyone talks to everyone else. There’s a reason we have the highest certifications and A+ ratings with independent business watchdog groups: we’re honest. If you still feel uncomfortable providing your budget to us, we understand, and will charge you a flat $100 fee to cover our estimator’s time to produce an Unqualified Budgetary Proposal.

Congratulations, you have chosen wisely, grasshopper! You are ready for us to install your new landscape. Let the construction begin! Landscaping is fundamentally quite simple, if you follow a logical progression of work. We start by Setting Up the jobsite, moving our equipment, portable toilets, materials, etc, to your property. Next comes Demolition and Site Preparation. Out with the old before in with the new! Underground follows demo. This includes any trenching for electrical, water, gas, sewer, drain, irrigation, ponds, etc, as well as excavations that may be required (no sense digging a gas trench only to dig it up again while excavating a pond, we think of such things in advance, we do, smart, we are). After undergound comes Form & Outline. This includes hardscape features such as patios, walkways, fences, etc, that help define a space or form an area or outline a traffic pattern. You may also have Special Features installed at this time. Perhaps a waterfall, fountain, BBQ, outdoor kitchen, or other special use item. Once all hardscape features are in place, Planting & Irrigation comes next. Here is where we turn your yard brown with topsoil, then green with plants, then wet with water to keep everything brown and green and wet. We may also install Lighting at this time, such as low voltage pathlights, accent tree uplights, area downlights, or underwater pond lighting. Finally, phew, finally, comes Cleanup and Final Inspection, where we make everything look good, get your approval, and finally leave you in peace to enjoy your new outdoor living space.

So what happens when we have to use the bathroom? We prefer to bring our own portable toilet to the jobsite, rather than risk tracking mud throughout your home and potentially leaving the seat up. By law you have to provide toilet and water facilities, but we think a hose bib and The Blue Room work just fine for everyone.

So what happens when it gets really hot and we get hungry? You, the homeowner, are supposed to blend us icy mixed drinks and prepare us a gourmet BBQ lunch every day. No? It was worth trying. We actually provide our own food and drink, stopping for breaks in the morning and afternoons, and a nice relaxing lunch in the shade around mid-day. You don’t have to do a thing, you’re not paying us for our time to sit around. When we get tired, we take a break, before it gets dangerous. If we get stupid and leave lunch litter laying around, please yell at us immediately!

So what happens when it rains? Here in California, we all fall down in thanks to the rain gods for our good fortune! We should be so lucky! If it rains lightly, or may clear in an hour or two, we might just continue working, or hunker down in the trucks for a bit until it lets up. If it’s absolutely dumping rain, or jobsite conditions prove counterproductive, we’ll just stay home for the day or work somewhere else until the storm passes.

So what happens way too early in the morning each work day? We show up at your curb, ready to work. Depending on driving conditions, we typically arrive between 8am and 9am, and typically leave around 4pm to 5pm. Jobsite parking can often become an issue, please inform us of any concerns.

So what happens when we make too much noise / dust / etc? This is construction, after all. Some level of inconvenience must be expected of yourself and your neighbors. We of course try to minimize our impact on others as best we can, but some level of irritation on behalf of someone seems to be inevitable. Please let us know the minute we negatively impact your life, and we will do our best to remedy the situation.

So what happens if, during construction when everything is torn up, you want to have a wedding party? Really? And you didn’t see this coming? Poor planning on your part, we’d say. And then of course immediately turn around and do our best to clean everything up as quickly as possible, maybe bring in some staged plants, gravel, lights, etc, and turn your house into party central. You’ll probably get a bill for the additional work, but hey, the bride / groom has to be happy, right?

So what happens if you have a question not discussed here? Too bad, your questioning abilities are severely restricted. Unless they are really dumb questions, in which case you can ask as many as you like, at any time, of any one, and we will do our best to answer honestly and directly.

You have a few choices to consider concerning how we proceed to charge you. Both choices are physically the same process, in that the same crews do the same work in the same workmanlike fashion with the same guarantees and warranties. The difference is solely in how we bill and how much you pay.

Bid Billing: Once we have given you a Proposal, we can easily (as in two mouse clicks) convert your project to a Bid Billing System. You have your known costs for individual line items, and your known total cost for all work as detailed in our Proposal, we simply bill you weekly on a percentage basis of work performed to date. In other words, your first billing will typically include Setup and Demolition line items billed at 100% complete for the first week of construction, as we move on to your property and begin our cleanups, and zero percent completed for line items we have yet to do (walls, lawns, etc that we haven’t even begun yet). As work progresses, the second week you may be billed a percentage for individual line items as we begin them, such as 20% for Concrete Removal, 35% for a Wall Foundation, 50% for fencing materials delivered to the site but not yet installed, etc. We only bill you after the fact for work actually performed, based purely on a percentage of work completed. At the end of your project, we will be 100% complete, and all your individual work line items will have been billed out at 100% as well, up to 100% of the total known set cost of your Proposal.

Bid Advantages: For people who feel most comfortable working with a set, known, firm monetary figure they can take to the bank, Bid Billing is ideal. (Actually, technically, we take TO the bank, you take FROM the bank, a minor detail that fortunately keeps us in business.) The unit cost of items is fixed at time of contract, so you will always know how much a square foot of concrete will cost you throughout the project. The only variances to your total landscape budget come when you change quantities. If you make your patio 200 sqf smaller, we issue a Change Order for -200 sqf of concrete (at your set contracted unit price per square foot) and charge you less. Conversely, if you make your patio 300 sqf bigger, we also issue a Change Order for +300 sqf of concrete (at your set contracted unit price per square foot) and charge you more. Your unit prices always remain the same, only the quantities may vary on Change Orders. If you add more trees, you pay more. If you don’t install a BBQ unit, you pay less. You only pay for what you get, at a rate predetermined on your Proposal and agreed upon in your Contract.

Bid Disadvantages: The dreaded Unknown! (play scary background music here) Unless something comes up in Discovery (turns out your house was built on an underground sea cavern we almost fall into as we try to dig a pond, for example, true story, craziest thing), your bid costs will remain fixed. The disadvantage to Bid Billing is that estimating is just that: Estimating. When we produce a Budgetary Proposal, it is our best guess estimate based on our decades of experience. We could be wrong, or unforeseen events (rain, traffic, materials shortages) may affect costs. We understand that a construction estimate is not an exact science, and we factor in a percentage for The Unknown, which you ultimately pay for in Bid Billing. When we assume all the risk, just like an insurance company, you pay us to do so. And just like insurance, where you have the peace of mind knowing exactly how much your deductible is during an accident, you pay for the peace of mind knowing exactly how much your unit prices are, and unless you decide to change quantities with a Change Order, that peace of mind comes at a fixed contracted cost. If it takes us less time than we estimated, we win. If it takes us more time, we lose. We assume all the risk and keep all the rewards.

Sample Time & Materials BID Worksheet

Time & Materials Billing: We can just as easily (two mouse clicks in our estimating program) convert your Proposal to a Time & Materials Billing system. Your known line item costs remain the same from your Proposal, your bottom line estimate remains the same, nothing changes, we simply bill you differently. In a T&M system, rather than charging you fixed Bid unit pricing ($6 per square foot of concrete, for example), we charge you fixed labor rates ($60 per hour masonry labor, for example) and a fixed percentage over cost (20% over invoice, for example) for materials. For 100 sqf of concrete, Bid Billing at $6/sqf will ALWAYS come out to 100 x $6 = $600, whereas in T&M Billing, if we do the work in 6 hrs and spend $100 on materials, your price will come out to 6 x $60 = $360 labor plus $100 + 20% = $120 materials, or $480 total. In this scenario, you would save yourself $120 going T&M rather than Bid. Conversely, if it took us longer than anticipated, say 10 hours, your price would be $720, a loss of $120 if you go T&M rather than Bid. With T&M, you pay for exactly what time and materials are spent on that line item, however long it takes or however much materials cost.

T&M Advantages: As stated, with T&M, you only pay for exactly what you get, nothing less, nothing more. Our company is three generations deep, so we feel quite comfortable in the knowledge and experience that our crews work fast and efficient. If you are willing to assume the Risk of the Unknown, you are more than welcome to reap all the rewards. We’re not greedy, we’ll share. If you are a gambling type, you understand that the house always wins. We wouldn’t be in business for 40+ years if this were not true. We may lose some, we may win some, but in the long run, odds are we will win. You may have on-site materials you want to use.  You may have a helpful (yet unwilling) teenage son willing to work for free.  If you are the type of person that tends to change your mind frequently as the job progresses, T&M Billing offers the ultimate freedom of choice as at any time you can say stop, go, more, less, take it out, move it, try this, what about that, etc etc. You are in control.  As long as you are willing to pay for it, we are for the most part willing to do whatever you ask.

T&M Disadvantages: Time & Materials Billing is the most true, honest, fair method of billing available. There are no hidden costs, no hidden profits. You can ask for copies of each and every time card, for each and every receipt. Your head may swim under a pile of paperwork, but we work T&M under complete transparency, as long as You Assume the Risk of the Unknown. We cannot say that we have been profitable on every job. Sometimes, things happen, and we end up paying you in the end for the privilege of having a beautiful yard rather than you paying us. Stuff happens, welcome to life. On the other hand, we’ve had some excellent family parties at the end of a job completed on time and under budget, so life can be good too, if you’re a risk taker. The main disadvantage to Time & Materials Billing is that you ultimately are not sure exactly what your landscape project will cost until it is completed, and if you are not careful, you may run out of funds part way through and not be able to complete certain aspects of your landscape as you may wish.  More likely, you may get carried away in the fun and adventure of landscaping and end up spending more money than you originally intended.  We can’t protect you from yourself, but we can sure help you spend your money.  On us.

Please note we do not offer “time and materials not to exceed a set price”, with us your commitment must be all or nothing. If you’re willing, the risks, rewards, savings and losses are all yours. If you’re not willing, choose Bid Billing, not Time & Materials Billing.

We accept primarily checks as our preferred form of payment. We will accept cash, but please be aware that we are completely “above board” and do not offer any form of “cash discount” or other cash incentive.

We will simply fill out a deposit slip and take your cash to the bank along with everything else (he says on the way to the airport with a bag full of the company’s cash receipts…..see ya!) Can you say Aloha? Neither can I, so I guess it’s on to the bank….sigh.

Please take into consideration that we do not offer credit terms, nor take credit cards as a form of payment. Invoices are typically presented to you on Tuesday or Wednesday of the week after work was performed, with payment typically due by Friday. We typically bill weekly, and expect weekly payments.

Yeah….. About that…. So….. yeah…. I guess it’s about that time where we need to have an open discussion about your duties and responsibilities around here.

Yes, you have a beautiful new yard, the envy of the neighborhood! Everyone comments on your success, your grandeur, your rise in the eyes of all those who behold your magnificence! Uh Huh, right, yeah, just up until the first or second weekend after we leave, when you are standing transfixed in said new yard, blank stare on your face, wondering just exactly who was supposed to mow the new lawn, pull the new weeds, check the new irrigation, rake the new leaves, sweep the new walkways, and the list goes on. And on. Every dang nab darn it all flippin flapjack weekend. You don’t want to lose your brand new landscaping investment dollars, but you don’t want to be a weekend slave to your yard either! Freedom from the shovel, you declare! Down with power tools, you exclaim! Will it never end, you cry out?

Why yes, yes it can. Just so happens we offer a Maintenance Service! Go figure! Who would have thunk? Some clever person within our company (uh, that would be the super lazy person with much better things to do than pull weeds on his precious days off) came up with a Weekly or Every-Other-Week Maintenance Schedule, complete with a truck load of tools and workers perfectly eager and willing to trade hours in your yard for a paycheck at the end of the week. It’s a win win situation, I tell you! Sliced bread has nothing over this, the greatest invention of all time: a checkbook that pulls weeds! Awesome, simply awe inspiring, truly amazing to behold.

Tell your friends, impress your neighbors, try it for yourself! You’ll be glad you did. Call today!