One of the most fundamental initial questions that a Designer must pose to a client is to establish their budget. Without one, how do you begin to start your mental planning process? Looking around a garden, noting levels and falls, existing trees and established features, condition of fences, security of site, eyesores in neighbouring properties, assessing shade and prevailing wind conditions, likely soil type, ground water issues – a hundred reference points are required to be assimilated and processed into your brain in the first twenty seconds on entering a garden.
This is how we have to work – detectives weighing up a crime scene within seconds before anything gets moved and evidence is lost! Without this rapid analysis, when we are asked for our ideas and opinions as though we are computers, all answers quickly revert to budget. ‘How much do you want to spend?’ ‘What is your budget for the garden?’
Most customers will plead they have no idea. No idea about how much they want to spend (of course they know! They just don’t to tell you this early in the game). No idea about prices of materials, even though they spend every weekend walking around garden centres, looking a plants and price tags. Many will have been confused by ludicrous prices bandied about by television programmes, which they know are not realistic, but are ever hopeful that you may have watched the same programmes and believe them to be accurate!
I suggest there are two ways of getting the client to set an initial budget, one could be called educational – showing examples of completed gardens with a price tag on each, complete from start to finish. The other method is to introduce rates for various materials and products in general terms. Paving prices are between £120.00 per square metre supplied and fitted rising to £200.00 per metre for the more expensive porcelain options.
Planting costs per square metre are between £30.00 for two litre pots, rising to a thousand pounds per specimen shrub. Turfing prices between £10.00 and £25.00 and so on.
Using completed garden schemes is very often the safest option in the first instance, as clients will relate to that figure. A plot size of (say) 150 sq m with paving, a lawn, small pond, five trees and full shrub cover is priced at (say) £12,000.00 including design survey and plans, full landscape service including VAT. To qualify that sum further, explain that the site was a new build garden with nothing to clear before work started.
By using genuine schemes and explaining how the price is built up – survey, design, clearance, skip hire, hard landscaping, soil preparation, planting, installing features, including all site preliminary costs such as toilet hire, insurances, transport, tools, equipment, final site tide etc, you are educating the customer into realising that a garden build is a progressive project and corners cannot be cut.
Therefore there is no point in trying to get a professional job done from design to completion without following a set and proscribed programme. Corners cannot be cut. There are no cheaper options to have a constructed properly.
By showing three different genuine jobs (whether or not they have actually been constructed or are simply plans and drawings), as long as you have a ‘completed’ price as a guide, the client can really take control of their thoughts and wishes by using your proven examples.
The alternative method of providing rates will appeal to some clients as an easier way to allow them to decide their budget -as yet undisclosed – by apparently being offered a ‘pick ‘n’ mix’ option. If we have XXX sq metres of paving, that will cost £xxx . XXX metres of turfing will cost so much. If we reduce the paving and add in more turfing, that could reduce the price.
This bargaining process is painful for a designer, therefore it is recommended that you provide those customers with a price menu, starting out with the design survey fee and progress to concept plan, final plan, technical drawings etc. – ensuring that your fees are clearly known and agreed as you go along. (I recommend that each part of the design process is separate and should be invoiced and paid accordingly)
If you choose to use both methods – completed examples of gardens, combined with a price menu, you should find that the customer quickly tires of trying to estimate their likely quote for the construction, then give you what you wanted in the first place – A BUDGET!
Once a budget has been provided, and the design commissioned, include in the drawings indicators of where you have allowed for conduits under paving and hard surfaces, in case they want to add irrigation, lighting, or power cables. This will tempt them into thinking beyond their stated budget and start considering ‘what if’s’, and adding features to the project. These forethoughts that you have kindly provided will not affect your design fee, but will be welcomed by the customer.
If a customer will not give you a budget, and refuses to do so for whatever reason, you are unable to begin working for them. How you manage your design practice will resolve many of these issues if you are clear in your offer as shown on your website. Any resistance is overcome by offering Consultancy as your initial service. First site visit consultations will be charged at £XXX including/excluding mileage. Leave copies of your example gardens behind with the client if they are unwilling to provide you with such essential information that must form such a major part of the client’s instructions. The costed examples will allow them to decide their budget before calling you back to site.
Finally, make it clear to the client they cannot simply remove an important element of a scheme completely – say removing paving for example – and expect the total cost of that item to come off the final invoice. Grading and clearance works will have been carried out. The hole in the design will have to be filled with something. Even if it is only prepared soil, there will have been a cost involved!