Question
Hello, I would your advice on what type of education or training I need or should gain to be an effective Landscape designer. As of now I抦 a full time paid firefighter and my father owns a wholesale material business (stone, mulch, plants, pavers ect.) My goal is to be able to bid job sights, design, and oversee the development of individuals landscaping needs. I have no experience in this field, so please any suggesting as to how I should start would be of much help.
Thank you,
Seth

Answer
Seth:
This is an excellent question and it sounds like you are well positioned to get work from family business. I wish you luck.

First, you should not go into this business lightly. It's not something you can just jump right into and do a good job. There is a lot to learn to be a good designer. You can also really mess things up if you don't do them right. Landscaping is expensive and you don't want to waste people's money.

I want to point out that it is VERY rare that anyone gets into the landscape business as an owner, lead designer, or manager without first having put in some serious time and effort. Many have worked multiple years before being ready to take on significant design and installation responsibilities. Before you do anything you will need to learn your local plants backwards and forwards. For example you need to know, which plants like sun, which like shade, how much water they require, what soils they need, what are good companion plants for others and finally how they grow so you can space them appropriately. On hardscapes, you need to know material coverages, like how many tons or Cubic yards of a type of material it takes to cover a given area at a given depth. Your father may have a good handle on some of these figures.
You'll need to know local codes and laws regarding landscaping and permitting. You'll need to know what labor costs are, what your overhead is, what machine rentals cost, specially for small skid steer loaders, and back hoes which you will need commonly. You'll need a network of subs at your finger tips ( a little black book or blackberry is great for this# and have a good handle on typical costs for their work so you don't get taken advantage of.

So where to start?...

I would recommend doing several things. For starters, sign up for a local class/es on plants perhaps through a technical college or similar institution. Many small commuter schools offer continuing education classes etc where you don't have to apply to the full program. A good basic horticulture class would do wonders. Consider also a soils class. Some colleges offer landscape management classes that would be great for you too. You may also attend classes taught by master gardeners, etc. There are many garden clubs that offer classes on a regular basis. Second start spending a few hours a week at a local nursery looking at plants, learning what their requirements are etc. Lastly consider taking a job at a nursery or on a landscape crew. Preferably both for maybe 3 to 6 months each. A nursery job in the spring and summer will be a an excellent way for you to learn your plants. Then if you spend a few months doing installations in fall you can keep a pocket notebook with you and start noting the time it takes to do certain tasks, the equipment required and number of laborers. You need to know time requirements for things like planting a shrub or tree, installing pavers or walls, etc. This knowledge is invaluable. You will also learn a lot about how plants are best spaced and installed. If you get a job like this try and select a firm with a good reputation not some guy and a pick up truck. A large firm that does big commercial or large residential jobs is best.

Ok, so after you do these things if you still want to get into this business, now you need to learn about contract law, and estimating as well as managing people and sub contractors. Learning local law is easy as inquiring with local county offices, etc and ask what kinds of permits are needed for various work you are interested in and then learning the processes and fees. You can obtain standard construction contracts from the Internet and modify them to suit your needs. I suggest using the AIA contracts, #American Institute of Architects). You might want to read up on local contract law, mechanics leins, etc. As for pricing and estimating, this is the hard part. Much of this comes from "having a feel" for what it takes. This takes experience you don't have and wont come by in a year or two..it takes many years of experience to gain the full understanding to start pricing "by feel". Therefore, you will have to use tools like 'Means Cost Estimating Guides'. You can google them and order the newest editions along with the guides on how to use them. You will also learn that many major types of work like building retaining segmental walls and installing concrete pavers have pretty typical costs used industry wide with minor variations for local labor costs. For example pavers usually run $5-$7/sf in Florida where labor is cheap and non union, to $10-12/sf in big cities of the east coast where labor is expensive. Concrete unit type walls on really big commercial jobs are $12-15/sf installed and on small can be $24/sf here in Atlanta. This illustrates a another thing you'll learn...economy of scale. Big or small jobs both have start up costs, mobilization costs, overhead and accounting costs, etc. They are relatively similar no matter how big a job is. So if you have a job that only requires 2/3 of a day, you pretty much have to charge for a full day anyway because you really can't accomplish much in the 2-3 hours left over, but you still have to pay your crew for a full day and rent the equipment for a full day.

There are some standards that work well. For most small jobs residential in nature, many contractors charge between 2 and 3 times the wholesale cost of the plant to install it. For example, if I buy a small holly shrub for $7.50 each I would install it for $18.00
The variation from 2 to 3 times the costs comes from the job size and competition. If you are bidding a small job and not bidding against another company charge 3x's the cost. However id it is a big job and you need the work bad, charge only 2x's the cost.

Also sometimes you factor in things like the plant selections. Some plants are a lot more expensive than others but the labor to install is the same as any other cheap shrub. You might price yourself out of a competitive bid if you charge the standard 2.5 times the plant costs and the shrubs is a $35 plant while most 3 gallon shrubs are only $7-10 each.

So anyway, this is a lot to take in. If your serious, I would put a one year plan together and try to learn as much as possible with no expectations of starting anything immediately. You might take on some really small jobs yourself after a year of learning. You can also learn a lot watching HGTV shows and youtube videos, seriously...

Anyway, best of Luck Seth

Sean J Murphy, LEED AP, RLA, ISA
www.seanjmurphy.com