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I don't talk about budget. I also don't talk about plants that don't survive here.
I do understand what you are saying. I see LA plans that just go out of their way to build expense into them. I see LAs go on all kinds of design tangents. I see some that seem to feel the need to introduce weird or hard to get plants in order to try to make themselves look smarter than the rest of the world. But, I have also seen LAs who do a fantastic job of addressing the needs of their clients.
One thing a lot of home owners say about LAs is that they are snobs and will only work for people with big budgets. One thing that the contractors who do not typically work with those big budgets say about LAs is that they don't seem to know what they are doing.
I started out as a teenager working with my father. In my early twenties I went to school to be an LA. I had two problems there. One is that I could not draw well (1981, before cad). The other was that my professors did not know the things that I knew from actually building and maintaining landscapes. At that time you could not work as an LA if you could not draw very very well. That also meant that graphic presentation was worth about 70% of your grades in school whether you knew how to put a landscape together or not. I dropped out and started a landscape contracting, design, and maintenance business that probably reflects about 80% of the businesses owned by members of this forum. I had four trucks, four workers, and did everything from cleaning gutters and raking leaves for little old ladies to designing and building nice gardens and patios in exclusive neighborhoods. I dealt with the same struggles many of you deal with. The help situation, getting to that "hump" where you can't seem to grow past a certain point, collecting every tool and piece of equipment known to man, and having to take on the projects that you really don't want to do in order to keep the cash flow. The thing that got to me was that I could not, or did not, shake the work that I did not want to do in favor of just doing higher end design/build. I did some of that, but not exclusively.
When you are in business, you begin to think like your customers because you have to in order to make sales. If you work for regular folks like ourselves, you have to think budget. In fact you have to prioritize budget. Half the decisions you make in designing a landscape are made by placing budget over substance. It fights you through the whole design process and compromises everything you do.
Now every once in a while you get a higher end job, but you (and me when I worked all niches) are programed to worry about the budget. The statement above that 10-20 grand does not go far is very true. Actually, 50 grand does not go far. It also follows that someone spending under 50k is not going to be looking to spend 5k on top of that for an LA. Part of that is because it is a big chunk out of that small budget, but the other part is that the site is probably pretty simple and only needs plantings and some basic hardscapes. Hiring a good LA does not have that much value in that situation.
What often happens is that some LAs are much like I was when I was a contractor. They take on work to keep busy and some cash flow coming in (like raking leaves and cleaning gutters). Frankly, these are the LAs many of you run into. Some of them just su(k, while others are trying to force elements and materials into jobs that simply can't absorb them because of budget or context. Still others are just totally inexperienced with the real world.
After you spend 5 years to get an accredited degree and have to work 2 years for a licensed LA before you can sit down and take three days of exams (maybe several times and for a great deal of money) to get licensed, you should have a pretty good understanding of how this LA business works. You have to work in high end (50 and way over), or you won't survive. You can't work for the middle class because you have nothing of enough value to them to offer them that they can't get from good landscape contractors.
Wednesday night, I went to a home of my daughter's friend because her parents wanted "professional advice". Nice new $500k home (he is a builder). They had done a basic foundation planting, a nice lawn, and have been cleaning the woods around the house. They had done a cheesy job on everything that they new they wanted. They don't want to change any of that. What am I suppose to do? Tell them the next thing that they want? Tell them why what they did is not working well? Propose a bunch of high end work that they can't afford and have little interest in? I did not charge these people not because they were friends, but because they were going to get nothing out of it. I really can't work in that niche because it is trying to sell ice to Eskimos (native Alaskans for any PC people). If an Eskimo buys ice, he feels ripped off. If you give it to him, you don't make a living. You have to sell the ice to people who need it and value it.
I'm sure those folks I met the other night thought "he doesn't know anything". That is not the reaction I get from people who have the needs that I fill.
I have to run. I'll babble more later.
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