Landscape Design: The Drawing Is What Makes Three Bids Comparable

When a garden is telling you it needed a plan

The signs below are the symptoms of work done in pieces. None of them is a fault of any individual contractor, and every one of them is expensive to fix afterwards.

• A patio that has to be lifted to solve a water problem that was already visible when it was built. The classic sequencing failure and the most costly one.
• Three surfaces in three materials that were each chosen well and have no relationship to each other, because they were chosen three years apart.
• A path that nobody uses, with a worn line across the lawn beside it. The route was drawn for the plan rather than for how people walk.
• Planting beds whose shape follows where the turf happened to end, rather than any line in the garden or the house.
• Irrigation that was extended twice and now waters a bed and a lawn off the same zone, because each extension was a small job.
• A retaining wall built to the height of the slope rather than to a level the site plan chose, so the terrace above it is a shape nobody uses.
• Utilities, meters and air conditioning condensers in the middle of the view, because screening them was never anybody’s scope.
• Nowhere to put the bins, the hose, the firewood or the bicycles. Storage and service space is the first thing a plan allocates and the first thing piecemeal work forgets.

Who draws what, and what they are selling

Design titles are used loosely, they are regulated differently from state to state, and the differences matter most when there is a structure, a grade change or a drainage question involved.

What a designer should establish before drawing anything

A plan produced from a photograph of the back of the house is decoration. These are the things a site analysis is for, and a designer who walks the garden will raise most of them before you do.

• Where water arrives, where it goes and where it stops. This is first because it constrains everything drawn afterwards, and it is cheapest to answer before any line is on paper.
• The soil. The Web Soil Survey gives the mapped soil, its drainage class and its shrink-swell potential for your parcel free of charge, and it is the right starting point for both the planting and the hardscape sides of the plan.
• Levels and slope across the site, at enough accuracy to know whether a terrace needs a wall and whether that wall crosses a permit threshold.
• Sun and shade across a day and across the year, including what a deciduous tree does to a seating area in July and in January.
• Existing trees worth keeping, and their root zones, because those are areas where excavation and paving are decisions with consequences years later.
• Utilities, easements and setbacks — the lines on the plat that decide what can be built where, regardless of how good the idea is.
• Access for construction, including whether a machine can reach the back garden and what it will cross to get there.
• What the household actually does outdoors: how many people sit, whether children or dogs use the lawn, where you eat, where you park, where the bins go.
• How much maintenance you genuinely intend to take on, asked honestly. A lower-maintenance plan is a legitimate brief and not a compromise.
• Any homeowners association covenant, water restriction or local ordinance that constrains plant material, turf area or hard surfaces.

What the design process involves

The useful versions of this process all share a shape: understand the site, agree the concept cheaply, then spend the drawing time only on what has been agreed.

1. 01

   Brief and budget conversation

   What the garden is for, who uses it, and what you are prepared to spend — in one number, honestly. A designer working without a budget figure will draw something you cannot build, and the redrawing is charged to you.

2. 02

   Site survey and analysis

   Measurements, levels, existing planting, utilities, drainage observations, sun and shade. This is the stage that produces the constraints, and a plan drawn without it is a plan drawn about a different garden.

3. 03

   Concept plan

   Areas, circulation and relationships — where you sit, how you move between spaces, what is screened, what is opened up. Deliberately loose, because this is the cheap stage to change your mind in and the last one that is cheap.

4. 04

   Review and revision

   Agree how many rounds of revision are included before this starts. It is the single most common source of friction on a design engagement and it costs nothing to settle in the proposal.

5. 05

   Developed plan and planting plan

   Dimensioned layout, materials named, levels indicated, plants specified by botanical name, size and quantity. This is the document that makes bids comparable, and its value is precisely in how specific it is.

6. 06

   Construction details where they are needed

   Sections through walls and steps, base build-ups, drainage runs and outfalls. Not every garden needs these; every garden with a grade change or a water problem does.

7. 07

   Phasing plan

   What gets built in which year, sequenced so that nothing built in phase one is disturbed by phase two. This is where a plan earns its fee for anyone building a garden over several seasons rather than in one go.

8. 08

   Tendering and bid comparison

   The plan goes to two or three companies who price the same drawing. Some designers charge to manage this and to read the bids back to you, and for a large project it is often the most useful hour they spend.

Design-build or an independent designer

Both arrangements work and both carry a conflict of interest. They are different conflicts, and knowing which one you are inside is more useful than pretending either is neutral.

What a design engagement should say in writing

A design contract is a document about deliverables, ownership and revisions, and every dispute we hear about comes from one of those three being left implicit. None of it is awkward to ask for at the start and all of it is awkward to raise later.

• The deliverables, listed — concept plan, dimensioned layout, planting plan, construction details, phasing plan — and the format and scale each arrives in.
• How many revision rounds are included, and what a further round costs. This is the one that sours engagements.
• Who owns the drawings, and whether you may take them to any contractor you like. A plan you cannot tender cannot do the job a plan is for.
• Whether a site survey and levels are included, or are a separate cost, or are assumed from information you supply.
• Whether construction details are included for anything structural, and who is responsible if a wall or a step needs engineering.
• What happens if bids come back over budget — whether revising the plan to suit is included or charged as new work.
• Whether the designer will review bids or administer construction, and at what cost, because those are distinct services from drawing.
• Whether the design fee is credited against construction if you proceed with the same company, and what happens to that credit if you do not.
• Who checks covenants, setbacks, easements and permit requirements, and whether the plan is warranted to be permittable.
• A plant schedule with botanical names, sizes and quantities rather than a rendered image. The image is not the specification, and only one of the two can be priced.

The test of a finished design is simple: can two companies who have never spoken price it and arrive at comparable scopes? If they cannot, the drawing is a picture rather than a specification, and the bids it produces will not be comparable either.

What moves the price

Design is priced on the hours the site and the brief demand, and those vary more than the size of the garden does. A flat quarter-acre with one seating area and a small steep lot with a grade problem are not the same drawing.

HyreYard publishes no design fee figures, ranges or national averages. We hold no dataset of what landscape designers charge and a number invented to fill this space would do more harm than the gap does. Ask two or three designers how they charge and for what deliverables, and compare those answers rather than a figure from a website.

What to ask before you sign

• What exactly do I receive at the end — which drawings, at what scale, in what format?
• How many rounds of revision are included, and what does another one cost?
• Do I own the drawings, and may I take them to any contractor I choose?
• Is a site survey with levels included, or is that separate?
• How do you charge — hourly, fixed fee, or a percentage of what gets built?
• If the bids come back over my budget, is revising the plan to suit included or charged as new work?
• Will you review the bids with me, and is that inside the fee or extra?
• Do you build what you draw? If so, what does the design cost if I do not use you to build it?
• Who checks setbacks, easements, covenants and permit requirements against this plan?
• Is anything here structural enough to need an engineer, and whose responsibility is that?
• Does the plan include a phasing sequence, and does it guarantee that phase one will not be disturbed by phase two?

The full ten-point checklist is on choosing a landscaping company, and the lines a comparable bid contains are on reading a landscaping estimate.

What to have ready

• Photograph the garden after heavy rain and in winter, not on a good day in June. Where water stands and where the sun does not reach are the two things a plan most needs and the two most easily forgotten.
• Look your address up on the Web Soil Survey and note the drainage class and shrink-swell rating. It is free, it takes about five minutes, and it changes both the planting and the hardscape conversation.
• Find your plat or survey and mark the easements, setbacks and utility runs. A plan that crosses an easement is a plan that gets redrawn.
• Write down what you actually do outdoors, honestly — how many people sit, how often, where you eat, where the dogs go, where you park, where the bins live.
• Decide a budget number before the first meeting and say it out loud. A designer working blind will draw something unbuildable and you will pay for the redraw.
• Collect images of gardens you like and, more usefully, say what you like about each one. "This material" and "this amount of planting" are briefs; "this feeling" is not.
• Be honest about maintenance hours. Designing for the garden you will actually look after produces a better result than designing for the one you intend to.
• Check your homeowners association rules and any local water or turf restrictions before you commission anything.

Where this goes wrong

Common questions

Do I really need a landscape design?

It depends on whether you have one project or several. If the work is a single defined job — a lawn renovation, a fence line, one bed replanted, a drainage fix with an obvious outfall — a plan will mostly restate what you already told the contractor, and the fee is better spent on the work itself. A design starts to earn its keep when there is more than one element, when those elements interact, when the order of work matters, or when you intend to build over several years. The clearest signal that you need one is bids you cannot explain: if three companies come back with numbers that are wildly apart and you cannot tell what any of them includes, you do not have a price problem, you have a scope problem, and a drawing is the cheapest way to fix it.

How does a plan make bids comparable?

Because all three companies are pricing the same document rather than the same conversation. Without a drawing, one bid includes regrading and a drainage outfall, another assumes the water problem away, the third quotes a patio two feet smaller than the one you imagined, and every one of them may be an honest bid for the work it describes. The totals cannot be compared because the projects are not the same. A dimensioned plan with materials named, levels indicated and a plant schedule by botanical name, size and quantity removes that variable. What remains between the bids is then genuinely price, method and the company — which is what you were trying to compare in the first place. Our note on reading estimates is at /landscaping-estimates/.

Why does the order of work matter so much?

Because some things are buried under other things. Drainage and grading are the first work on a garden for an unglamorous reason: water moves through and under everything built afterwards, and a surface laid over an unresolved water problem has to come up to fix it. Soil improvement comes before planting for the same kind of reason — it is far harder to do around established plants. Anything involving machinery comes before delicate finishes, because a machine has to cross something to reach the back of a property. Utility runs for lighting and irrigation go in before paving, not through it. None of this is difficult to sequence when it is planned; all of it is expensive to discover halfway through. A phasing plan that sequences correctly is frequently the most valuable page of a design, especially for someone building over several seasons.

What is the difference between a landscape architect and a landscape designer?

Landscape architect is a licensed title in most states, with education, examination and registration requirements behind it, and it is the appropriate qualification when a project involves grading, structural elements, stormwater management or drawings that go to a permit office. Landscape designer is generally an unregulated title, which is a statement about regulation rather than about skill — a great many excellent garden designers use it, and the word alone simply carries no verified credential with it. In practice the distinction matters most when there is a grade change, a wall above a permit threshold, a drainage system or a structure involved, and matters least on a planting scheme for a flat garden. Because the regulation is set state by state, check yours: our summary is at /research/landscaping-licensing-by-state/.

Should I use a design-build company or an independent designer?

Both work, and both carry a conflict of interest that is worth naming rather than pretending away. With design-build, one party is accountable from drawing to handover, the plan is buildable because the builders drew it, and cost feedback is immediate — but the company defining the scope is the company that gets paid to build it, and nothing inside that arrangement argues for a smaller scope. With an independent designer, nobody is selling you construction, so the plan can honestly recommend doing less or doing it later, and it can be tendered to several builders for a real comparison — but that designer is paid for drawings regardless of whether they price to budget, and one without a construction feedback loop can produce a plan that comes back at twice the brief. The two questions that expose either arrangement are: what does the design cost if I do not build it with you, and what happens if the bids come back over budget?

What should I be given at the end of a design?

At a minimum, a dimensioned layout plan showing areas, circulation and materials, and a planting plan specifying plants by botanical name, size and quantity. If there is any grade change, retaining structure or drainage work, you should also get sections or construction details for those elements, because they are the parts that cannot be priced or built from a plan view. If the work is phased, you should get a phasing sequence. What you should not accept as the deliverable is a rendered perspective image on its own: it is a communication tool, it cannot be priced, and it cannot be enforced. The practical test is whether two companies who have never spoken could each price the package and arrive at comparable scopes. If they could not, the drawing is not yet a specification.

How much does landscape design cost?

We are not going to publish a figure. HyreYard holds no dataset of design fees and no survey of what designers charge, and a range invented to fill the gap would be worse than the gap, because you would plan against it. What we can tell you is the structure of the question, which is more useful anyway. Designers typically charge in one of three ways: hourly, a fixed fee for a defined set of deliverables, or a percentage of eventual construction cost — and that last one has a direction to it worth noticing. The fee follows the hours the site and brief demand, so slope, drainage problems, survey requirements, the level of detail you need and the number of revision rounds move it more than the size of the garden does. Ask two or three designers how they charge, for exactly which deliverables, and compare those answers.

Is the design fee credited if the same company builds the work?

Often, in design-build arrangements, and it is one of the reasons those designs are cheap or free at the point of sale. Read the conditions rather than the headline. Ask whether the credit applies to the whole fee or part of it, whether it survives if you build only some of the plan, and — most importantly — what the design costs and who owns the drawings if you decide to have someone else build it. That last answer tells you what you actually bought. A design you cannot take to another contractor is not really a design; it is a proposal with drawings attached, which can still be a perfectly good thing to accept, as long as you accept it knowing that is what it is.

Sources

• Web Soil Survey, USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service. Checked September 5, 2026.