Yard project results are worth delays
Despite evidence that would suggest otherwise, construction projects do end. Witness my new backyard. All you need are tongue-biting patience, puppy-dog faith and a maybe little Scripture.
I have opened a bottle of Prosecco, and my husband and I are toasting our new yard with our landscape designer Tony Evans, who has spearheaded the sixmonth landscaping odyssey.
My husband and I first met Evans, owner of Orlando Landscape Design, last December, when we invited him over to help us reimagine our unremarkable backyard, a forsaken, overgrown, downtrodden plot of earth.
A month later he presented a virtual rendering of what our yard could be. The avatar yard maximized the view and minimized the neighbors. It featured three outdoor rooms — a living room, dining area and hearth room with a fire pit and a fountain. We were sold. We kicked the project off March 1.
Since then, I've learned landscaping projects are like pregnancy. Once that baby arrives, you forget the nausea, heartburn and swollen
ankles, because the reward is so worth it.
Now I can hardly remember the tree remover who didn't grind the stumps low enough to literally make the grade.
I can barely recall the day when the wall fountain, which needed to go in before anything else and took nine weeks to arrive, couldn't be installed because the Bobcat that was supposed to carry the fountain into the yard couldn't drive over the 4-foot-deep, 4-foot-wide trench the gas-line contractor had dug to bury the gas line, which couldn't be filled in until the gas line passed inspection, which couldn't happen until we could get an inspector, which was difficult because of the pandemic's stay-at-home orders.
And I have only a dim recollection of the cement fire bowl that arrived cracked, and the monthlong wait for its replacement, and of the 3,000 pounds of black Mexican beach rocks coming to Florida from Idaho.
“It's the little foxes that spoil the vineyards,” Evans said, paraphrasing a Bible verse, meaning it's all the stupid nuisances that get you.
Evans is a former youth pastor, a skillset he needed to draw on to work with me.
Indeed, our project relied on six or seven industries to pull together. A lot could go wrong.
But never mind all that. My backyard is now my favorite place to be.
If landscape architecture is the art of turning an uninviting space into a place you want to enter, then mission accomplished. Labor pains and all, I would do it all over again. Meanwhile, here's what I learned:
• Pay for a design. Hire someone trained in the field of landscape architecture. A landscape designer knows how to employ scale, proportion, texture, balance, function and aesthetics.
• Ask what's included and what isn't and budget accordingly. Our landscape proposal covered demolition, grading, patio travertine, beach rock, plant materials, mulch, the irrigation system, labor and oversight. Everything else we paid for directly.
• Understand the fee structure. Most landscape designers charge a flat design fee, often less than 10% of the total project cost. Then owners can either do the work themselves, hire their own contractors to do the work, or have the designer oversee the project for an additional percentage.
• Be patient. Projects need to move forward sequentially. Problems at any step can delay the whole job. Expect hiccups. To borrow from Shakespeare, just like true love, the course of home renovation never did run smooth. But all's well that ends well. And that's all that matters.