Landscape designers can bust or save a budget.

$2500 or $10,000 for one hedge ??

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Even people with money falling out of their pockets can find this subject to be interesting: likewise with people limited funds.

Its very possible for landscape designers to “tax” your landscaping budget with as little as one kind of plant on a design plan plant list.

Even if your landscape designer attended design school, investigate the potential expence of some plants on your plan.

A routine practice for professional landscape design is adding plant lists to plans or blueprints. The landscape design plant list will include names and sizes of plants to be planted.

There can be a large difference in shrub and tree prices when comparing different sizes. Take Emerald Arborvitae for example. In 2005, one nursery listed 5' to 6' tall Emerald Green arborvitae at $25 per plant. The same nursery sells the 6' to 7' tall ones for $38.

That same business sold 7' to 8' Emerald Green arborvitae for $84 per plant. An 8' to 10' size was $157 and 10' to 12' size was $225 (each).

If you can get by with a 5 foot to 6 foot tall hedge, you will pay only $25 per plant. If that hedge will contain 100 arborvitae, it will cost $2500 to pay for all 100 of the 5 foot to 6 foot tall plants.

But, suppose a landscape designer writes “8 feet” in the size box of your design list for the landscape project. Now how much will that 100 plant row of greenery cost?

To simplify, split the difference between $84 and $157 written earlier for the 7' to 8' and 8' to 10' sizes. Just call it $100 per plant to be conservative, so the answer is $10,000 for the 100 plant hedge..

That's an increase of $7500 by listing plants in the 6' range, rather than the 8' range.

If your landscape architect or landscape designer wrote 8 ft. to 10 ft., the cost of the plants alone could be upwards of $15,700.

By the time labor and equipement are added in, the difference between a 6' or an 8' on the plan, can make a difference of $15,000. If you need the bigger plants and have the funds, no problem - get it done. But if you don't have that kind of money to burn, watch these details.

There is more to this. One worker can handle, lift and plant a 6 ft. tall arborvitae. And the planting hole is not large. But an 8 ft. tall arborvitae requires 2 or 3 workers to handle it, and the planting hole is a small crater. That means the labor cost to plant each 8 ft. plant will be higher - double or triple.

The root ball of an 8 ft. arborvitae displaces much more soil than the root ball of a 6 ft. tall plant. There will be an added labor expence to relocate soil. Hauling expence may be added too.

Many times, home owners have no awareness of this information or how important it is. If a landscape architect specifies plant sizes that are too large, the home owner may never learn about it.

If 3 separate landscapers bid on a design plant with excessively large plants specified, they may not comment to a homeowner about sizes in the plant list. That's not what they are expected to do. That was the landscape designer's job. The landscape contractors will merely provide estimates, and one of them will be hired.

If a plant list specifies too large of plants, that flaw can easily go undetected if the landscaper's bids are close to each other. The homeowner will see 3 bids that resemble one another, and may not suspect anything unusual financially.

The difference in cost between different sizes of plants means its critical for designers to understand landscape construction practices and unit costs. In fact, it's important for homeowners to realize this also, because many of them may install their own landscaping from a plan provided by a designer.

This does not imply that landscape designers are typically ignorant. In general, many landscape designers and architects handle this aspect of design very well. And the better design professionals should welcome your concerns and questions to "test the water" regarding this aspect.