On Nov 20, 12:11*pm, Brooklyn1 Gravesend1 wrote:
On Sat, 20 Nov 2010 09:53:59 -0800 (PST), gardengal

Many large nurserys/growers employ and/or are owned by degreed
designers/horticulturists who will when you purchase their plantings
and/or have them do the planting services offer the designing gratis.
This is an excellent arrangement that has served me well, and turns
out to be the least costly approach, in the immediacy and in the long
haul. *But if all someone wants is to get ideas but is not yet ready
to actually proceed with the project there are many software programs
out there that one can experiment with, and only spend a few bucks...
even public libraries will loan design software and/or permit free use
on their computers. *It's really quite silly to hire a self proclaimed
landscape designer who is free lance, has no place of business other
than out of their home, and pay them big bucks for advice you may or
may not use or be of any value whatsoever... I wouldn't spend $5 for a
watch to someone selling out of a suitcase on a street corner, I'm
certainly not going to pay thouSand$ for landscape design to anyone
who operates out of the back seat of their automobile.

Actually the property owner is their own best landscape designer...
one needs to actually live on a property on a daily basis for a
minimum of two full years before attempting any major landscaping...
no one who spends an hour in your yard can offer you much more than
the kind of BS you can't even compost.

Unless you have more dollars than brain cells do your own landscape
design, take your time, do only a small project at a time and be sure
you're happy with it before moving on to the next one. This way it
will take a few years but you will have something that really works
for you, not the landscaper's bank account. *And landscaping is a
forever ongoing project, it never ends, it never takes a vacation.
Nowadays everyone who goes about mowing lawns and spreading manure
calls themself *landscaper
- Show quoted text -

And that is an excellent dissertation from someone who apparently has
no idea what is involved with "design". Landscape 'design' - as
opposed to digging out planting beds and plopping in some plants - is
both an art and a science. Most homeowner are not landscapers.....many
are barely even gardeners. And even less have the knowledge supporting
basic design skills: composition, a sense of balance and scale,
spatial analysis, site planning, how to combine textures, shapes and
colors, how to create a sense of unity and repetition. Let alone the
ability to analyze soils and drainage. And then there is basic plant
knowledge - required cultural conditions, mature size, behavior and
habit - not to mention the dozens of assorted technical skills
involved in actually implementing a design, should they be ambitious
enough to create one of their own.

Sure, a lot of that can be learned but not everyone has the luxury of
the time involved OR the desire to begin with. Or is interested in
going through the trial and error (and associated expense) involved
when you learn as you go. FWIW, landscape software is only a tool,
just as a drafting table or CAD system is to the landscape architect
or designer. It DOES NOT replace design knowledge - garbage in,
garbage out. To hire a professional to provide a service you are
unable or unwilling to do yourself is considered by most to be an
investment......why should landscape design be any different? And the
relevence of where this professional has their "office" is totally
unimportant. Unless employed by a large company or the owner of one,
most of the trade professionals operate from a home base and
freelance.

Not very many nurseries or garden centers provide 'free' design
services. It is expensive to have a qualified designer on the payroll
(nursery owners are waaayyy too busy to be hands-on in this type of
activity) and the time involved in developing a landscape design is
not insignificant. It is simply not cost effective. And those that do
offer this free service tend to use rookie or newly hatched designers
(read 'cheap') who have not yet developed a skill set or the customer
base to be out on their own. And why be restricted to only the plants
that nursery happens to have available or have in overstock that they
are trying to clear out, which is typically the case in "free"
designs? Why settle for cookie cutter when something of distinction
and class can be had relatively inexpensively? Remember, you get what
you pay for -- if you don't pay anything for the design, chances are
you are not getting a design worth paying anything for. IOW, you are
settling for the lowest common denominator.

There are a lot of fly-by-night outfits and individuals out there and
that includes a lot of larger companies as well. As I stated in the
last paragraph of my previous post, do your homework before hiring any
professional. But to consider hiring any professional "silly"
indicates an enormous lack of knowledge of the activity involved. It
might be something you can do yourself with varying degrees of success
but personally, I'm not inclined to re-do my own plumbing or rewire my
house - I'd rather hire someone who KNOWS what the heck they are about
and can do it properly the first time.

But I guess that's just me being "silly".