Landscape Design vs Landscape Construction: What Comes First?

Almost every enquiry we take starts in one of two places: a homeowner with a drawing looking for someone to build it, or a homeowner with a blank backyard looking for someone to tell them what to do with it. Both are workable. But the order in which design and construction happen sets the budget, the approvals path and the finish quality for everything that follows.

Design comes first - always

Design is where the levels, drainage, structure and materials are resolved on paper, when changes cost nothing. Construction is where those decisions get committed in concrete and stone, when changes cost thousands. A backyard designed on site, one decision at a time, almost always ends up over budget - not because the trades are expensive, but because nobody priced the retaining wall until the excavator was already there.

What the design phase actually resolves

• Levels and fall - where water goes before it reaches the house
• Structure - retaining, footings, pool shell position, deck substructure
• Circulation - how people move from kitchen to table to pool
• Materials - paving, stone, timber, screening, and how they meet
• Services - lighting circuits, irrigation, power and gas to the outdoor kitchen
• Approvals - whether the project is exempt, CDC or DA territory

The cheapest change you will ever make to your garden is the one you make on the drawing.

Where construction expertise belongs in the design

Design done in isolation from building has its own failure mode: beautiful concepts that cannot be built for the budget, or cannot be built at all on a site with 900mm of side access. Because we design and build in-house, our concepts are costed against real trade rates and real site constraints as they are drawn. Clients get one team, one point of accountability, and no gap between the intent of the drawing and what is set out on site.

If you already have a design

We regularly build to other designers' and architects' documentation. In that case the first step is a review - we check levels, drainage, structural detail and buildability, and flag anything that will cause trouble before we price it. That review protects both parties and usually saves more than it costs.

The practical sequence

Site measure and brief, concept design, refinement, documentation and costing, approvals if required, then construction. On a courtyard that whole path can be twelve weeks. On a full rebuild with a pool it can be nine months. Either way, it is the same order.