Marin
Landscape
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THE MAGAZINE FOR LANDSCAPE
DESIGN BY MYSTICAL LANDSCAPES
RECENT POSTS
By: Dane Rose
Over the years I have observed many basic mistakes being made on projects. Some of these mistakes are so basic it is incredible! And yet they happen every day on typical landscape and construction projects. Why?
What it boils down to is that one or more key question did not get asked or answered and written down BEFORE the project was underway. Why does this happen? Client communication is not part of most landscape design training courses. Compounding this fact, most clients assume that a good designer will just know what is important to them without having to communicate it. When these clients interact with designers who believe that they should understand their clients psychically there is a VERY high probability that something will not be clearly articulated and understood. This leads to mistakes.
Another reason questions don’t always get asked relates to the power-balance in a client/contractor relationship. Before you sign a contract, you have all the power and the contractor HAS to be reasonable on price. But once you sign the contract the power balance can shift in favor of the contractor. If in the middle of the project you realize “Oh my god! We forgot to run a conduit under the wall for the hot-tub we are planning next year. We need to add that in right away before the wall gets any higher…” then a change order is generated. And while you may not be happy about it, the contractor can charge a lot for those because it is now a monopoly relationship. And now that you have changed your mind in the middle of a project, they can side-step a commitment to have the work done on time.
By: Dane Rose
Design principles are values but they are bigger than the values and priorities we choose for any one project. They function parallel to everything you have already learned. These are the values we use to guide ALL design decisions on ALL projects, regardless of the budget, environment, practical needs or preferences of those involved.
For example, the first principle I design with is “minimum effort for maximum result.” This comes from the value I and most of my clients share of getting the most value for the time, energy and money we spend, REGARDLESS of what we are doing. If I am installing a landscape and there is a $10.00 dollar tool that will do the same job as a $50.00 tool I will buy the $10.00 tool. If my clients can hire a landscaper to create the same garden for half the price as another landscaper, all things being equal, they will pick the lower-cost company. Why? Because the money saved can be used to buy other things they value. The same is true of energy: All things being equal if there is a shorter way to get to work, we will take that route and save time and gas so that we can spend that energy doing something more productive than sitting in traffic.
Almost everyone will relate to this value, but it is still subjective. The important thing is to be clear on what our design principles are. Below are the principles that I use, along with some brief examples of how I apply them in the design process. I’ve chosen this particular set of values because they provide a clear path to get from chaos to a finished garden that most of my clients are extremely happy with. You can borrow all or parts of it or develop your own design philosophy.
By: Dane Rose
Living sustainably or being “Green” has become popular and many companies have jumped on the band-wagon. Often it can appear that to “be green” you need to buy new things or redo your garden. This is rarely the case. I’ll outline three levels of sustainability.
But first, what is a totally sustainable landscape? Very simply it is a landscape that does not require ANY artificial energy source from outside to sustain itself. Nature is the only truly sustainable landscape.
Level One: Just to put things in perspective, the VERY best thing for the environment in most cases is to do absolutely nothing. Turn off all irrigation, disconnect any power, stop mowing, weeding and anything else. In a matter of months or years your garden will become overgrown in a mix of plants that require no maintenance in order to survive and provide habitat for native animals.
Level Two: The next level of sustainability in most cases is to minimally maintain what already exists. To illustrate this let’s examine the energy consumed in the process of taking a few hundred square feet of concrete or asphalt and turning it into a bed with drought-tolerant ground-cover. In Marin this process might go something like this:
By: Dane Rose
Did you know that over time you may spend more money maintaining your landscape than designing and installing it combined? This is particularly true when a project is installed with minimal thought to maintenance. The fact that you may spend more money maintaining a mediocre garden than something really exciting to come home to also highlights why design is so important. If you are going to spend $10-100,000. maintaining your garden over its lifetime it might as well be something that makes your home functional to live in and beautiful to look at.
Thinking about maintenance at the design stage is also important because if you design something, however nice, and it is too expensive or hard to maintain your efforts will be wasted. It will rapidly look overgrown and unattractive.
By: Dane Rose
Many of us spend more time at home after dark than during daylight hours. After spending tens of thousands of dollars to create a beautiful landscape, not being able to see it at night is a terrible waste. Spending less than 10% more on a landscape can double the enjoyment we receive from our landscape when applied to landscape lighting.
Other benefits of landscape lighting include:
- Safety and comfort on pathways and stairs.
- Discouraging unwanted animal visitors.
- Adding to home-security at night.
There is one instance where landscape lighting does not make sense: Because almost all real-estate transactions occur during daylight hours it is not a good investment to install landscape lighting SOLELY for the purpose of selling your home.
This chapter deals with information that is NOT on the packages and instructions that commonly come with low-voltage fixtures and lighting kits. If you are totally new to electrical wiring I suggest you begin by either doing a YouTube search on “low voltage lighting” and “low voltage electrical wiring” or visit the Urban Farmer in Mill Valley, where they will answer any questions you may have. The Urban Farmer provides unusually helpful information as well as a unique service of loaning out a lighting kit at no charge to allow you to test them in your landscape before making any commitment to purchase. This provides confidence that the fixtures you buy will create the lighting result you want. The Urban Farmer has higher prices and better quality than Home Depot and many other local suppliers. Home Depot has the lowest landscape lighting costs and hopeless customer service, which is a problem if you don’t know what you are doing.
