Design, Installation and Enhancement

The number that matters is the ten year cost

Two designs can cost the same to install and differ by a factor of three over a decade. Nothing on the proposal tells you which is which.

The difference is in the choices. A hedge that wants to be eight feet tall, held at three feet, needs cutting six times a year forever. A shrub that naturally stops at three feet needs cutting once.

Same look on day one. Very different bill by year five. This is the single most useful question to ask about any commercial landscape design: what does it cost to keep it looking like the drawing?

Two designs can cost the same to install and differ by a factor of three over a decade.

Turf conversion, done properly

Taking out grass is the most common commercial landscape project in Southern California right now, and it is the one most often done badly.

The failure is almost always the same. The turf comes out, low water plants go in, and the irrigation stays exactly as it was. Spray heads on a turf schedule then drown a planting that wanted a quarter of the water. Six months later the plants are dead and the water bill has barely moved.

A conversion is an irrigation project with plants attached. If the proposal does not change the irrigation, it is not a conversion.

Phasing a project across budget years

Most commercial landscape projects are bigger than one year of budget. That is normal, and it is better to plan the phases than to do a thin version of everything at once.

The rule is to phase by area, not by trade. Finishing the frontage completely beats doing the soil prep everywhere and the planting nowhere. A finished area looks finished. A half done property looks neglected in every direction.

Start where people arrive. Entries, the main frontage, and the space outside the leasing office return more per dollar than anywhere else on the site, because that is where every visitor forms an opinion.

The first year decides the tenth

New planting is at its most fragile in the first six to twelve months, and that is exactly when attention drops off, because the project is finished and the invoice is paid.

Low water plants are the biggest trap here. They earn their name once established. Before that they need regular water like anything else, and cutting it early is the fastest way to lose a whole installation.

A written establishment schedule solves it. Who waters, how often, for how long, and when it steps down. Without one, the schedule quietly becomes whatever the controller was already doing.

Choosing plants for a commercial site

Plant selection on commercial property answers to a different question than it does in a garden. The question is not what looks best. It is what still looks acceptable on the worst week of the year with nobody paying it special attention.

That rules out a lot of beautiful plants. Anything that needs deadheading, staking, dividing, or protecting is a poor fit, not because it is difficult but because it will not get any of that on a commercial schedule.

It also rules in a lot of plants people dismiss as boring. A shrub that holds its shape, tolerates reflected heat off pavement, and shrugs off a missed watering is doing real work. Boring, repeated well across a whole property, reads as cared for.

Lighting and drainage, the two things people leave out

Lighting and drainage rarely appear in the first version of a landscape proposal, and they are the two items most likely to cause trouble later.

Drainage is the more serious of the two. Water that has nowhere to go finds somewhere, usually a building. Beds that hold water kill planting slowly, then all at once in a wet winter. Fixing grade and drainage after planting means digging the planting back up.

Lighting is a smaller problem with a bigger effect. Half of the year, tenants and visitors see the property in the dark. A landscape that photographs beautifully at noon and disappears at six is only working half the time. Lighting is also a security item, which makes it easier to fund than planting.