What happens at a landscape design consultation?

There is already a garden. It just isn’t in the ground yet.

It lives in a folder on your phone. Eighty saved images you have never shown anyone, and no two of them are the same style, which bothers you slightly. A courtyard in Portugal. A row of clipped green cubes against a rendered wall. A pool that looks like it was cut out of the rock. A picture of somebody else’s steps, saved for no reason you could explain, except that the steps were the right width and somehow you knew that mattered.

And there is the feeling underneath the images, which is the part nobody has a word for. Coming out of the back door in the evening and not having to think about where to go. The property looking like it decided something. Guests arriving and the place doing the talking before you say a thing.

You know exactly how it should feel. You cannot draw it, price it, or tell a landscaper what to build.

But that garden does not come out of your head on its own. That is what the first conversation is for, and it takes half an hour.

Quick answer: A first landscape design consultation is a 30-minute video call. You show the space and describe how you want to use it, and the designer asks about levels, drainage, sun, privacy, budget range and timeframe. It costs nothing, commits you to nothing, and you finish it with a clear recommendation of which design package suits the site and roughly what it would involve.

What is the consultation, in plain terms?

A 30-minute Microsoft Teams call. No cost, no obligation, no salesperson.

It is a conversation between somebody who knows what they want and somebody who knows how to get it built. Half an hour is deliberate. It is long enough to understand the property and what you are hoping for, and short enough that booking it does not feel like a decision.

You do not need a plan, a budget spreadsheet or a settled idea. Plenty of people arrive with nothing but the folder of saved images and a vague dissatisfaction with the back lawn. That is a perfectly good starting point.

What will you be asked?

Fewer questions about plants than you would expect, and more about how you live.

How do you want to use the space? Long lunches, small children, dogs, a lap pool, somewhere to sit alone at seven in the morning. Use drives layout, and layout drives everything after it.
What does the site do? Where does the sun land in summer and in winter, which way does the wind come from, where does the water go when it rains hard.
What can’t move? Boundaries, a septic field, a drive, a big established tree, a view you refuse to lose, a neighbour’s window you want gone.
What do you already dislike? This is often the most useful answer of the lot. People describe the garden they want with difficulty and the garden they have with total precision.
What is the range you are working in, and when do you want to be using it? Not a fixed figure, a range. The same courtyard drawn for a modest budget and drawn for a large one are two different layouts from the first sketch, so a designer working blind has to guess, and the guess wastes somebody’s time in one direction or the other.

What gets looked at on the call?

Whatever you can put on the screen.

Photos taken from the angles you use the property from, standing at the kitchen window or the back door rather than from the far corner of the lawn. A title plan or survey if you have one. Aerial imagery, which we can pull up during the call.

If you would rather just walk around outside with your phone camera on, that works too, and it tells a designer more than a tidy set of photos does. Levels, awkward corners and the things you have stopped noticing all show up when somebody is walking.

What do you need to have ready?

Nothing. But three things make the half hour go further:

Photos or a video walk-around, taken on a normal day, mess included.
Any documents you already have, even old ones. A site plan, a survey, a set of house drawings, a soil or drainage report.
A rough sense of your range and your timing. Two summers away is a different design to next spring.

Nobody is marked down for turning up with none of it.

What do you walk away with?

A clear recommendation, and enough information to decide with.

By the end of the call you should have a clear answer to which package fits your property, what the process would look like from there, roughly what it costs and roughly how long it takes. If your project would be better served by a local landscaper and no designer at all, you get told that too.

What you do not get is a free design. Nobody can look at a property for half an hour and produce a considered layout, and anyone who offers to has either done it before for somebody else or is about to.

Does it work if the designer is on the other side of the world?

It does, and the format is the reason.

A first consultation is a conversation and a screen. Nothing in it requires anybody to stand on the lawn. The site information a design depends on, levels, boundaries, services and drainage, comes from documents and survey data rather than from a pair of boots, and it arrives the same way whether the designer is twenty minutes away or on another continent.

The one thing to sort out early is the clock. Booking across a large time difference means somebody takes an early morning or a late evening, and it is easier to agree that at the start than to discover it later.

What the consultation is not

Being straight about this is what makes the button easy to press.

It is not a sales call. There is nothing to sign and no follow-up sequence.
It is not a site visit. No measuring, no levels taken, no soil dug.
It is not a fixed quote. You get a realistic range. A firm number needs the site information.
It is not a plant list. Planting is one of the last decisions in a design.

What happens if you want to go ahead?

The next step is gathering the site information, and it costs you nothing but time.

You would be asked to gather the site material properly, which usually means a survey or title plan, levels if they exist, and photographs taken to a short brief. Then concept work begins: the layout, the levels, the movement through the space, and the 3D visuals that let you stand in it before anything is built.

Design fees start from $1,800 for a concept plan, and depend on the size and complexity of the property. There is a fuller breakdown in our post on what landscape design costs.

Common questions

How long does it take to get a consultation booked?

Usually within a few days of asking. The booking page shows live availability (link below) so you pick a slot rather than wait for a reply.

Do I need to have my budget worked out first?

No, and pretending you have one costs you more than admitting you have not. A range is enough for a designer to steer you sensibly. Arriving with no idea at all is fine too, and part of the call is helping you build one.

Can my partner or my builder join the call?

Yes, and it saves time. Two people in a household frequently want different things from the same garden, and that is far better discovered on a free call than halfway through a concept.

What if my house isn’t built yet?

That is one of the best moments to have this conversation. Levels, drainage and the position of doors and windows are all still moveable, and those decisions shape the garden more than any planting will.

Will you tell me if I don’t need a designer?

Yes. Some projects are a single contractor and a good afternoon of thinking. Being told that costs us half an hour and saves you a great deal more.

The garden in the folder on your phone is a real thing. It has a shape, a budget and an order of operations, and none of those exist yet. Half an hour is where they start.