Prices of Garden Designers?

lucylu

We have a 3/4 arce rural garden and plan do do all the work on it ourselves over the years.

We have no solid driveway, kerbs, mounds of clay and weeds on a large south facing area to the front of our house what we would like to grade.

We want to get a landscape designer to basically before we start getting in Diggers to draw a basic plan say where to position greenhouse,apple trees, veg patch, how much we should slope/lawn,where to position low walls, lighting cables, water connections etc... nothing fancy no mad scupltures, upstanding rocks or lollipops.
For a guy to come and look at it we were quoted €150 max 1 hour and up to 2000K for this dude to draw plans... :eek:
Another lady was €75 per hour she spends drawing plans + travel expenses with 3 visits.

Is this the norm? Or should we forget about a designers & their advice and just kick the ball and let God direct it???

Sonnenblumen

Rates would appear very low so why do you seem surprised??

Before you answer, think about the investment in time and money with the implementation and if you find someone willing to work for nothing well, you've some money saved to pay for the consequential mess.

lucylu

The engineer that drew the plans for our house was cheaper! :eek:

2K for a basic design with no manual work involved to me seems extensive

Kashkai

At least you got someone to call to your house Lucy. We contacted 12 landscapers last year , of which one turned up, spent 5 minutes looking at the job and went away and we never heard from him again. I had a thread last year complaining that I took several days off work waiting for the various landscapers to show up which turned out to be wasted time, and I was jumped on by the landscaping fraternity for not paying due regard to their expertise in the art of garden creation - they basically said that I should have booked them up to 6 months in advance and that I'd have to pay top dollar for their advice. In the end, we got a local in to turn over the land (about an acre) and level it. We then raked it, took out the stones and seeded it. We now have a lot of grass to cut but we'll plant it to our tastes in the coming years. Have a go at it yourself, you might make mistakes but they'll still cost less than what you'll pay a landscaper before he even puts a spade in the ground - now I stand back and wait for the aggrieved garden designers to jump in with their hurt feelings .

egan007

I can recommend someone but I don't think he'd wasnt his name here so if you want his details Pm me and Ill send them to you. His company is New Earth Landscapes.

Foleyart

We got a landscape designer to draw up a plan for ours around an acre in total and she did it to our spec in sections that could be tackled over a three year period. €500 and well worth it. It means that you get plants and trees recommended which are suitable for your particular soil and climate, also wind factor, nearness to the sea or any other factors. Cant think of her name but has a book called dont forget your shovel. Barna in Galway. You pay peanuts, you get monkeys!!