Outdoor area - Tasks - Hiring a landscape gardener

Hello,

it is about the outdoor facilities and I need your input. The building permit and approval for drainage are now available. The construction company will be active soon (within max. 2 months). It will be turnkey and we also need to take care of the outdoor facilities soon.

I see the following points as the first step, which absolutely have to be done upon completion of the house:

P1. Infiltration of rainwater on own property.
P2. Drainage (when is it needed?)
P3. Splash protection
P4. Connection of wastewater
P5. Connections for water, electricity, gas, and telecommunications
P6. Paving (driveway, carport to the entrance, terrace, ...)

Then:
P7. Garden/planning ... (planning maybe should partly be done first?)
P8. Carport with storage room
P9. Space for bicycles etc.
P10. Garden shed, greenhouse
...

Some things can of course be done gradually by oneself. For me, it is first about necessary things, basically the first 6 points (right?).

1. When is the best time to hire a landscape gardener?
2. What should we pay attention to when selecting a landscape gardener?
3. In which steps will the outdoor facility be created?
4. Which tasks need to be done at all (am I right?) and what must be included in the contract when commissioning?
5. Priorities?
6. How can different landscape gardeners be compared? (Price/quality)

Thank you very much for your help and support

Well, you are good. How long will the construction take? Your garden landscaper will be able to start at the earliest in [feb\ March 2019]. If everything goes smoothly. You can already do a rough planning before that, but until then... isn’t anything from the outside included in the price for [schlüsselfertig]?

How long it will take to be built, I also cannot say, but at the moment I know almost nothing about [Außenanlage] and I am racking my brains about what I will do for [Außenanlage]. „It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.“

Is your house builder from the area? Then ask him which civil engineer he has already worked with.

Landscape gardener always sounds so "fancy"...in the end, it’s a construction burp with an excavator, a compactor, and a rundown Mercedes Sprinter flatbed

Do you think that as much as possible should be done by the house builder instead of the garden landscaper?

In our area (southern Germany), garden landscapers currently have about a 1-year lead time. Depending on the winter, this can be slightly longer or shorter.

Finding the right garden landscaper is too individual.
A lot or little/no personal effort?
With a lot of personal effort, you are well off with a very small landscaper, as they usually rely on assistance. The prices are fair for that. However, the small one will not have all the complete tools + construction equipment like a big one.
For example, we wanted a natural stone wall made of differently sized stones.
Only 2 out of 5 landscapers could do that.
Because they need a special grabber for their excavator for that.

Budget?

Wishes?

If you want to compare garden landscapers, you have to know exactly what you want, but at the same time, you take away the landscaper’s creativity if he is supposed to create a garden plan.

In our area, the big garden landscapers now charge a small fee for garden planning. But in return, you get a top plan – with which you can then do whatever you want. The garden planner definitely spends his time on it. There are also landscapers who don’t create a plan. Then you get a standard offer 0815 and are supposed to know what is meant.

I think that with a corresponding budget, the money for a garden plan is well invested. Costs about 200€ here.
They are credited back upon order placement.

So I would start looking for a landscaper about 1 - 1.5 years before – if the house is fixed. Often they will accommodate you price-wise if you don’t pin them down tightly on the date.