Prioritizing horticulture. Do you want to have the entire garden planned?

Excavating 3m deep with the mini excavator, I rather don’t think anyone would put themselves through that. Besides, that’s quite a few cubic meters that can’t be loaded onto a tipper with a mini excavator.

The stupid thing is that the landscaping gardener absolutely recommends this as the first step, even before establishing the terrace. Such rough work should definitely be done immediately and not messed around with later on the property with extensive earthworks.

But that doesn’t really surprise you, does it? Well, of course he wants to do it right away because then he’s sure to get the contract. He doesn’t get it if you do it in a few years, because the probability is simply higher that someone else will get the job then.

The advice itself is okay in that there may potentially be repairable (!) damage to the existing garden if you do it afterwards. But selling that as the necessary first step is total nonsense. That would mean, conversely, that he only installs pools in new builds... cheap and obvious sales tactic in my opinion.

If you want to do it later, and he can’t manage it, then he’s out. Surely there are others who won’t make such a fuss. As others have said, a mini excavator is enough, you can protect existing lawn if necessary, and possibly also repair it. I don’t understand the problem. Or is your property so special that you can never ever get back to where the pool is planned?

Or is your property so special that you can never, ever get back to where the pool is planned?

Yes, you will always be able to get in there with a mini excavator and a removable cab. Unfortunately, I have no idea how complicated it is to excavate, say, a 4x8m pool 3m deep with it and then somehow transport the soil with a mini excavator to the street or whatever.

He also didn’t say that it definitely wouldn’t work, but that he would definitely do that first, even before the terrace, and that otherwise it would definitely cost more than just a few euros and involve collateral damage.....

Well, it's relatively simple. So you want a pool, but later. By the way, I think that's very reasonable, of course you can cover it but the risk would be too big for me as well. Daughter is 5 and got the [Seepferdchen] at the beginning of the year. She's still quite far from swimming safely though. And as you know, toddlers can drown even in a puddle.

So you plan the garden in such a way that nothing valuable or irreversible (tree) is planted on the street side in truck width. So you deliberately leave a gap in the planting plan, which you then close after building the pool. And turf that has been driven over can be easily replaced with [Rollrasen].

Unfortunately, I have no idea how much effort it takes to excavate, let's say, a 4x8m pool at 3m depth and then somehow transport the soil away with a mini excavator

As I already hinted above, this is hardly doable with a mini excavator. Most of them cannot reach such a digging depth, and if they do, only right in front of the machine. Then the excavator's capacity is not even 5 m3 per hour, so you would have the machine running for a whole week for such a hole, which a large excavator could load directly onto (about) 6 dump trucks in one morning.

I am slowly starting to understand how a pool can cost 30k I recently built a 100 m3 underground tank for cooling water, which was significantly cheaper, even though it has a lid...

Then my previous tendency, that I rather believe the statement of Gardener 2, seems to fit.

I think we'll take him as well if the offer for the planning fits.

Maintenance effort means for the Japanese maple that it loses its delicate leaves in autumn, and those are then annoying.
I can also observe that the tips of the leaves dry out in somewhat drier weather, so watering is required.