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When Mr. Smith saw his new home for the first time, he was ecstatic. It had all the right things in all the right places, just as he had hoped for. Mrs. Smith loved her new kitchen and the space inside was just wonderful. The day to move in came and as they were unpacking boxes in the kitchen, Mrs. Smith looked out through the breakfast nook and through the beautiful bay window into her new back yard. Suddenly, a look of dismay came over her face.
Something was wrong, and it was obvious to Mr. Smith that Mrs. Smith was not a happy camper! “Honey, what is it?” he asked and paused to turn his head in the direction she was looking. He dropped the empty box in his hand onto the floor and just stood there for a moment. The couple gazed into what seemed to be the barest, most boring expanse of fenced in property they had ever seen.
“What are we going to do? I mean, we can’t live with that!” exclaimed Mrs. Smith. Immediately Mr. Smith went to the local phone book they had recently found on their doorstep and started combing the pages for landscaping companies. “Ah-ha! Here they are! Wow. There’s like twenty of these companies. Which one do I call?” he asked out loud. Mrs. Smith quickly replied, “Just call the ones with the biggest ads, since they probably have more money to spend on advertising and surely didn’t get to where they are by treating customers badly!”
So, Mr. Smith called the biggest three ads and set up consultations. Saturday came and one by one the landscape salesmen arrived. One was early. Another was late by five minutes, and the third was right on time. They each had pretty big ideas, which gave the Smith’s a lot to think about. Then, the estimates starting rolling in. One had left his estimate with them and had been able to even sketch out a simple design of the property. However, when all three estimates were compared, that same one had not been as thorough and had left off a few things that actually made his price higher had he included them. The other two estimates didn’t seem to compare well either though. One charged twice as much as another for a three gallon sized shrub while the other company charged much more for mulch. There just didn’t seem to be a standard to follow. Each company seemed to be doing their own thing and setting their own table of weights and measures. How should they know what to do?
Mr. Smith disgustedly tossed the papers on the kitchen counter. Mrs. Smith just shrugged and sighed. “I guess we could always just do it ourselves….”she said. “Yeah right, we don’t know the first thing about plants or landscape architecture for that matter. We’d probably just make a mess of things. I’m just gonna go with the guy that turned his estimate in the day he came out here. He had a lot of good ideas and seemed to know what he was doing.” Mrs. Smith replied, “But honey, he left off some things we know we want that will make his bid significantly higher!” “I know, I know, but hey his other prices seemed fair.”
Needless to say the job was half paid for and the day for installation arrived. As the crew began to work, Mrs. Smith noticed that there was water coming up out of the ground where the crew was digging, but the crew was simply standing around looking at the whole in the ground without any real sense of urgency………
You can imagine how the rest of this story turns out. What the Smith’s needed was a trained professional landscape consultant. Someone who could work with them and completely for them and not for a company. They needed someone to show them not only how to create the property they desired that would match the house they loved, but also the ins and outs of possibly doing it themselves. So much of what goes into a property can be done easily with the right tools and the right information.
Casey Landscape Consulting and Design is able to meet that need for you. Robert Casey, will come to your property and show you how your property could become what you've wanted for the price tag you've wanted as well. Consultations include time spent training you concerning the major issues on your property and then a formal or artistic design can be created to give you a plan of action. Robert will then go a step further and play the roles of advisor and even broker should you desire to enlist an installation company for sections of your installation. Robert Casey is available at 903-271-3420.