Have you thought about what you want out of your Calgary Landscape?
After a hard day at work, it is nice to come home to a place where you can relax stress free.
Imagine the sound of a babbling brook by a patio that holds a brand new outdoor table set where you and your family can share meals and memories, intertwined with a beautiful landscape.
Calgary is an interesting place to plan a landscape as we are subject to erratic weather. I think everyone in Calgary has gone outside after a good night’s sleep and seen a blanket of snow over their Backyard Landscape in May, June and sometimes even July & August.
Nevertheless, creating your own backyard paradise is totally worth it, despite the short season.
The first place to start is to look outside and decide if Landscaping is a priority on the budget. There is no point on engaging in work if things are not done correctly, some people see the Landscaping quote and run. Things can get quite pricey.
On the other hand DO NOT goes with the cheapest contractor as you definitely get what you pay for.
There is a huge range of quotes generally for the same type of project. This is especially true in Calgary. The boom that Calgary saw over the last few years made it so that almost everyone with a shovel became a landscaper.
An example of this is a few years ago I went to a quote in which a couple needed a giant retaining wall built in the Calgary area. They went ahead and got quotes from about 5 different landscapers. The quotes came in between $16,000.00 and $35,000.00. This is an absolutely enormous range for a landscaping project.
The Calgary couple ended up going with the low end landscaping quote. Guess what happened? Well, the Landscaping company that they hired showed up with two workers and a couple of spades. The spent 4 months working on a Landscaping project that would have taken a Landscaping Professional three weeks to complete.
Furthermore, the landscape was not excavated properly as they didn't have the proper landscaping equipment to dig properly. Most Calgary Landscaping companies have in the very least a skid steer. This Calgary Landscaping job required a mini back hoe so that the grade could be excavated down to the clay. For most Calgary Gardener's clay is a nightmare, but in this case, the high levels of clay in Calgary is great sub base for building.
Back to our Calgary couple and the two kids on shovels they got to build a massive 40 foot retaining wall. Well, they had no machinery, took almost all summer to build the landscape wall. They forgot to account for drainage and low and behold about two weeks after they left the property, a massive rainstorm hit and the wall split in two sections.
The Calgary couple took pride in their home and had it rebuilt. The costs to rebuild the landscape wall were about $5000.00 to un build what was done wrong and then they ended up hiring somebody that knew what they were doing for around $30,000.00. This doesn't include the extra summer that it took to get their project done.
Total cost: the cost of the high bidder anyways, minus two summers of headache.
Moral of the story, hire a landscaper who has references, a solid portfolio and low and behold, DO NOT hire a landscaper that comes in at half the bid price of the rest of the contractors.
Good luck with all of you Landscaping endeavors and make sure you do proper research before hiring a Landscaping Contractor….
