A landscape designer works out what should happen on a property and puts it on paper at a scale someone can build from. That covers the layout of the space, the planting, the hardscape, and how water moves across the site. A contractor then builds it, and on smaller outfits the same person often does both. The design is worth paying for when the property has problems that cannot be solved by eye, or when the work will be spread over several seasons.
What does a landscape designer do?
The work starts with a site analysis, which means recording what is already there. Topography, soil, drainage, existing vegetation, exposure, access and the way the site sits in relation to the sun and the prevailing weather all matter.
From that comes a concept plan, and usually two or three of them, showing different arrangements of the same space so the owner can react to something real instead of describing it in the abstract.
Once a direction is chosen, a planting plan lists every plant with its location, quantity and size at installation. A grading and drainage plan sets out how the ground will be shaped and where water will go. The final set is a coordinated group of scaled drawings covering hardscape, planting, grading, drainage, lighting and materials, specified closely enough that a crew can price the job and build from the paper.
What is the difference between a landscape designer, a landscape architect and a landscape contractor?
Landscape architect is a protected professional title in British Columbia. It is regulated under the Architects (Landscape) Act by the British Columbia Society of Landscape Architects. To use the title, a person has to complete the required post-secondary education, pass examinations covering public health and safety, and finish a supervised internship. The Act restricts the title, not the practice, so someone who is not registered may still do the work. They simply cannot call themselves a landscape architect.
Landscape designer is not a protected title, and there is no register to check. That is not a reason to avoid designers, and plenty of strong design work in the province is done by people who are not registered architects. It does mean the label tells you nothing on its own, so the things to look at are the portfolio and a sample of the drawings.
Landscape contractor turns the plan into work on the ground. Some contractors design as well, some work only from plans provided to them, and some will build whatever is pointed at without a plan existing at all.
For most residential and small farm work, a designer plus a competent contractor covers the job. Landscape architects are typically involved where a project is large, public, or has engineering and regulatory requirements attached.
What is in a landscape design package?
At minimum, it includes a set of scaled drawings that a builder can work from without having to invent anything. In practice that means the site analysis, a chosen concept, a planting plan, a grading and drainage plan, and specifications for materials.
A phased sequence matters as much as the drawings on most properties. A design that has to be built in one season is a design that only gets built if the whole budget arrives at once. A phased plan lets the ground be prepared in year one, the structure go in during year two, and the planting fill in afterwards, with each stage still making sense on its own.
Do you need a design, or can you just hire a crew?
For a single, contained landscaping job, a crew is enough. Replacing a fence, laying a patio the same size as the old one, or planting a bed against a wall does not need a drawing.
A design earns its cost when the property has a problem underneath the surface, such as water sitting where it should not, ground pitched the wrong way, or a slope that has to be held. It also earns it when the work will run across several years, because the expensive mistake in phased work is building stage one in a way that has to be undone to reach stage two.
Why does design matter more in Terrace than in a milder place?
More of the decisions in Terrace are structural rather than cosmetic, and the cost of getting them wrong is higher.
Terrace receives somewhere between about 2,100 and 2,250 mm of precipitation a year across roughly 217 days, so where water goes is a first-order design question on almost every property. The ground varies as well. Valley fill in the Terrace and Kitimat area is largely glaciomarine mud and glaciofluvial gravels, and those two drain in opposite ways, so two properties a few hundred metres apart can need entirely different work.
Plant selection is narrower in Terrace than it is farther south. The frost-free window is about 143 days, and cool, cloudy summers leave less margin for a wrong choice. A failed planting costs money and a full growing season.
Slopes need particular thought, because the geological literature describes the Terrace and Kitimat area as a landslide-modified glaciomarine landscape. Anything that changes drainage above a building or a road on that ground warrants professional geotechnical input. The same caution applies to earthworks intended to hold water on a slope.
When in the year should a design be commissioned?
A design should be commissioned well ahead of the build, because the construction season in the Skeena Valley is short and wet. The analysis, drawings and decisions belong in the winter. That leaves the spring and summer free for work in the ground, so a property owner hoping for work next season is usually having the first conversation several months ahead of it.
Landscape design in northwest British Columbia
The value of a design is that it turns a series of separate jobs into one plan, so each stage is built in a way the next stage can use. Mauldin Horticulture provides landscape design, planting plans, farm design and installation across northwest British Columbia.