Rachel and Rick
Project Date: August 2011
Project Price: $10,000-$49,999
First of all, our project was pretty small in the grand scheme of things… just a middle-of-the-road backyard re-do. But this project was our first major home renovation project, thus it represented a substantial dollar and emotional investment for us. And, as such, we placed a huge premium on finding a landscape designer that we knew we could work with.
After interviewing several designers and having very limited success finding someone that cared enough to truly understood our vision, within five minutes of talking to Dave, we knew we had someone different. While everyone else spent 90% of the conversation discussing budgets and timelines, Dave was far more interested in figuring out our goals and motivations for the project. He then quizzed us on our design philosophies and sensibilities. He even asked us what kind of music we listened to! In fact, Dave did more interviewing of us than we did of him.
In short, after talking to Dave about our project, we didn’t talk to anyone else…
Once we moved into the design phase, Dave spent literally hours in our back yard. We found that he had an extremely easygoing and friendly manner that put us at ease. He even put up with our rather large and obnoxiously friendly dog. Dave was also extremely engaging and, ultimately, worked very hard to get to the root of WHY we were redoing our back yard. Only once he truly understood the “why” did we get into the “what.”
And oh my…the what!!! Dave captured EXACTLY what we wanted, taking our design sensibilities and pulling them from our heads into our beautiful backyard that included the raised vegetable beds, backyard orchard, and outdoor living areas that we desperately wanted.
Throughout the whole project, Dave was the consummate professional. He didn’t just drop of his drawings and say, “good luck!” From the bid process, to the selection of the contractor, to the actual construction, Dave spent entire days at our house. Though we were small potatoes compared to the six figure projects he undoubtedly had, Dave took ownership of OUR project, making sure that what was ultimately installed perfectly captured our shared vision of what our backyard could be.
Perhaps the best praise we can offer is the knowledge that we have already engaged Dave in the pre-design phase of our (eventual) front yard re-do….
Hire him. You won’t be disappointed.