Join me in this detailed video where I walk you through the process of quoting landscaping jobs. In our first quote, we tackle a tight budget for a zero-escape project, exploring the transition from grass to rock. I share insights on aesthetic considerations, budget-friendly options, and addressing client preferences, such as delineation between properties, with cost-effective solutions like rip wrap.
The video unfolds with a variety of landscaping quotes, covering projects ranging from bougainvillea installations to maintenance contracts. I discuss the challenges of balancing client expectations with budget constraints, offering transparent insights into the upselling process and the importance of considering long-term maintenance.
Join me as we explore a practical walk-through of a potential maintenance job, where I share my expertise in assessing landscapes, identifying issues, and offering comprehensive quotes. I’ll highlight the human side of the landscaping business, underscoring the importance of empathetic interactions with customers.
Throughout various landscaping projects, including zero-escape transformations and maintenance assessments, you’ll learn valuable insights into decision-making, budgeting, and the art of landscaping quotes. Whether you’re a landscaping pro or just curious about the industry, this video provides practical knowledge and a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the world of landscaping quotes.
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Good morning. So I did say that I would be videoing a bunch of the quotes. And kind of what we look at, what we go through, what kind of questions we ask and see if going through it a few times brings you a little value if you’re ever doing landscaping.
So this is our first quote. This person has a tight budget. They want a zero escape. So you can see that they have not watered in a long time. So they’re Bermuda and their grass is dead. And that happens quite a bit in the valley. So you can see that a
Lot of people have moved over to just rock. So that’s what they want to do. Zero Escape is just rocking and adding a few plants. This is a relatively simplistic job. This person only has a budget of about $3,000. So we’re trying to do something within budget.
So a couple of questions that we asked right away is, do you want to get rid of your irrigation? If so, will this cap it? So, I mean, there aren’t problems. We ask about what type of undulation do you want? Because if you just have a lot of rock in here,
It ends up being a big area of rock and, esthetics wise, you don’t have a big budget. Just adding a couple of mounds and a couple of boulders will do a lot. The other thing that we usually ask is when it’s when there are two properties next to each other,
We’re trying to figure out, do they want delineation between yards? So do they want to put in an edge of some sort that comes down, separates their yard from their neighbor’s yard? And if they do want that edge, how much do they want to spend on that? So they could do pavers.
They could do plastic edging. They could do something with concrete block that actually makes a little wall. Or in this case, he really wanted to stay on budget. So he’s going to do it. We’re going to suggest a rip wrap, just a natural, larger boulder. delineation there. So, Yeah, essentially this one
Simplistic. We take a bunch of pictures so we can give a little baby cat and. And from there we just designed something. And you? Even through a couple of plants. And to be completely honest, like with $3,000.
Not going to get very much bang for your buck. The rock itself. You’re looking at a cheap rock is going to be 50 bucks a ton. So with that being the case, I mean, 50 bucks a ton for
An area like this we’re probably looking at. 10 to 15 tons of rock. So right there, you’re already with the installation, you’re over 1500 bucks probably, and delivery. So at that point, it’s kind of like with your demo stuff like that. So we’ll design, put a couple
Succulents in there, a couple of cactus. Try to, there’s only a few things that we can really add and that don’t need any water in the summer. And because it’s a zero escape, most people want to water zero in the summer. So that’s what we want to get
Them and that’s what we’ll do. Another place, another quote. I was already out there with them and. No, I don’t want to go out there and look stupid because I’m self-conscious. But we’re going to do bogan villas across there,
And bogan villas across that front sides are to 15 bogan villas across the front. And then in the back of the house, brand new five bogan villas up against their back wall. And they have a little corner by the pool that they want to do something cool.
But they don’t want to spend a lot of money because they looked at some of these palms. And these palms are like this, its gonna be 15,000$ If we ever want a palm like that. That is true. They are so expensive. So we’ll try to find something cool to fill
The corner. Might be a palm. Might be, I don’t know. Something faster growing, probably. I can start small. And the final thing they put in agave and like, a closet corner outside, almost like outside their bathroom window. Complete shade. No sun whatsoever. So the
Thing’s probably not going to live. So we’re going to come out with something that can handle some shade and puts on outside of their bathroom window. So those are the things that’s going to be 20 bougainvillea, all five gallon pots, and we’re going to do something unique,
Maybe a mediterranean palm, something like that. And then something that can handle shade. I actually don’t know what handle shade out here, but we’ll find it. Ooh, another quote. This one is actually a maintenance quote
And a couple of other things. So they already have turf, so limited maintenance here in Arizona, if they are living in the house, biweekly is good. So every two weeks just trim stuff down, blow stuff
Out, blow off the driveway, blow off the turf, fluff it up, rake the rocks, make it look pretty. Get rid of the weeds. In their scenario. They’re here in the winter and then they’re gone in the summer. So we’re giving them a quote for doing a biweekly all
Winter trim and everything down, keeping it clean, and then we’ll change it to monthly in the summer because they don’t need to waste their money. This is going to be rocking this whole thing. this is the Palomino rock. Looks like about a half inch. So we’re going to
Go for doing an inch and a half of rock. Bout that much to refresh this whole thing, make it look a little cleaner, and then also going to give them a quote for changing the shape of
This concrete edge. It’s going to come down like that. Make this area rock, pull out this sod. Kind of mimic what’s going on over there. Just no maintenance. Then he’s done, mowing is over and he’s golden. So we get a sod cutter here in here, cut this out and rocket
Fabric and cap the irrigation. Also going to need a bit of an irrigation audit just to make sure everything in here is working properly and the stuff back by the pool. Another day, another quote. So this is another zero escape. Clearly, that’s a popular thing in the valley. It’s just ugly.
But along with DIVEDIR are actually going to make it because all they want to do is scrape this stuff out, lay fabric, and then lay rock again. They just want lots and lots of rock. And here They’re thinking about a couple plants. They want no maintenance at all. So, I mean,
Like I just said, rock probably three quarter inch because all the smaller stuff will just kind of wash out during a monsoon and and we come through here and we look at plants, if you want completely no maintenance, no watering. It needs to be native plants so you can’t
Have agaves well, you can have two types of agaves. Actually, I’ll tell you that in the car quick as I take a quick peek. This is the second portion of the job. And all he wants to tear out all of this
Grass. Pretty simple and trim of that tree and rock the whole thing. Whole thing rock doesn’t want anything else outside of that. Just fabric and rock. So like I was saying, when it comes to zero escaping.
There’s a lot of people that would say you can put every type of agave in and you can put every cactus and you can put in a bogan villa. You see them on the highways. That isn’t true in Arizona. If you’re truly deciding to zero escape without any water.
Your options really are cactus and a couple of agaves. Sorry. So what that means is you need to pick natives. Natives. Ocotillo, swarrow Golden barrel, you can do Golden barrels no matter if it’s a fire golden barrel or a golden golden barrel. You can do a century
Agave, maybe you can do a Perry agave and you can do one type of yucca, the soap tree, yucca. Outside of that, if you want a bush that’s really mangly and weird looking, you can do a Creosote Bush. You see those out in the desert. Kind of ugly.
And then usually, unless it’s a really hard summer, you can do Texas sage. So there are a few more cactus, obviously, that work that come in from the Middle East. But you really want to focus on something that is straight up native to the area. If you’re questioning
Whether or not something can live, look up. If it’s a native plant, it’s a native plant. It can live without water. This was her turf that was torn out by a builder. We have a sewer line here. We have some settling in here.
Let’s add a bass rock. Bring it up to about an inch and lay the turf. We’re going to actually cover the sewer and the homeowner said its fine to cover it. We don’t need
To worry about it. Just want to have it gone. We’re going to do it in 3 to 4 pieces. We’re going to do it the short way. Get rid of as much waste as possible. We’re going with a cheaper turf, cheaper infill. And throughout here, that’s I mean,
That pretty much sums it up, for example. I kind of gave you a rough look at that one because at home on her or she was sitting there with me and honestly, she was not having a good day
She was crying about that turf so. Yeah. I don’t really want to rock the boat, make her feel uncomfortable or. I don’t know. I also felt bad for her that she was that distraught about showing her turf that was ruined. It’s kind of sad. I’ve never
Seen someone react that way. So when giving quotes from when looking through projects. You’ll find that you just run into a lot of different types of people. I do have to realize everyone’s human. You’re working with humans. You’re supposed
To be empathetic. You’re supposed to care. You’re supposed to love them. That’s your job. Your job isn’t to just look at landscapes. Get quotes. Your job is to make people’s lives better. Be there for them and really improve their lives along with their outdoor yards, outdoor landscapes that sounded better.
But that job’s easy. It’s kind of. Going to be the cheapest form of turf that we can lay. So. Not my favorite kind of things usually. I mean, honestly, we probably wont even get the job. That’s the truth of the matter.
We don’t usually get the jobs that are cheaper. So. But we’ll give her what we can give her a discount that we can and go from there. Another quote. So this, lets zoom out. This is something that they potentially want redesigned.
They loved and they love their big staple pieces. And they love it looking natural and they really don’t have much of a budget so It’s kind of hard sometimes when you’re trying to decide what to do as a business owner. You want to help people, but also you can only spend so
Much time. So this is probably something that we’ll have to charge for design. Probably do something and get some more undulation through here. Build this up with rock. Add a few more boulders. Add a little rip wrap riverbed through the middle.
Probably try to mimic like what neighbors have. So, I mean, it’s good to see what other people are doing in your neighborhood. You don’t want to go over the top and just make something a way nicer than everybody else because, well, then you’re just increasing
The value of other people’s homes and really decreasing your own because you overdid it. Look at that, that’s really why I’m here. So this this project has multiple stages to it. I’m here because someone drove from there through that little fence up and boom,
Written in that bowler, you can actually see where the oil is on that rock. So the oil pan broke open, whatever that’s called. I’m not a car guy. Yeah, they took out a huge 15 foot yucca and then they ruined the bunny ears. So we would come in,
Scrape this out and scrape out the rock pretty much to that creosote bush right there. And then install something new. How long this edge. Something that is drought tolerant but maybe isn’t a cactus cause dogs getting in the cactus kids stuff like that. And then we
Do a soap tree yucca in here and some new rock. So you can see we just do. Yeah, some new stuff to match in here. That’s a that’s a half inch actually, it’s three quarter inch through some
Of this. It’s kind of a mix. So but we would maybe if the adjuster comes in and says that they have more of a budget, we might add a little mound in here and a boulder to more.
We don’t really do walls now. So I will give a quote for this. And if it gets accepted, great. Maybe I will do it. It’s just kind of dependent to see where we’re at. If we’re just flooded with jobs. Right. We needed something to fill our time or fill
A crews time like something like this. Not that hard. This wall is re redone. We’re not going to rebuild it because they don’t really have the budget. So we’ll do is will come in and we’ll kind of regroup stuff and we’ll probably use
Some some culc for the cracks just to kinda. I don’t know I mean if we come up in here. I’ve had to do this. And… jeez that scared me. Kind of. I had to do this with our own buildings. So just culc stuff
In here kind of firming up a little bit. And then we’d come. We do all of these joints, make sure they’re all good. Prior to filling the joints, we power spray this whole thing. Just to make sure that we get anything loose out of there so it doesn’t crumble after fixing it
In the first place. So power spread. Compound to fill the joints in. And it should last little longer. I mean, It’s a long ally. So if it does fail and falls into the alley, no one is likely getting hurt. And the worst case scenario is you
Just push it aside and build a new wall. I mean, you’re going have to build a new wall anyways, so it makes it kind of easy to sit in. When you have jobs like this, like we like to separate our quotes. So we’ll have like priority one is that corner right
Consult for that. And then priority two is that redesign and the front priority three is that back wall. We’ll parcel it out so people can actually see and price compare and figure out what they want to do. Another quote. So this one, I mean,
A contractor here screwed this client. Left this untrenched. Said that’s all they’re doing and then threaten their wife. The wife here. So we come in, we’re going to refill this. So when it comes to irrigation, all the pipes we like to pack underneath the pipes. So, you know,
You don’t run into an air pocket or something later that kinks the pipe or anything like that. So pack along these pipes for and check all your irrigation. Could you see some cut. Some of it’s cut. And some of it’s just weird.
So you see that we’ll pack this. We’ll get new pavers that match this. Because when you’re relaying papers like in here, it’s just impossible to relay it in a way that you use exactly what was existing. It’s just too difficult because there’s it gets loose, it packs
Differently. So it kind of just needs to make new cuts along the edge. So new pavers in here. Refresh the Rock add a couple of plants along that edge. And then through work back here, we’re just going to double check irrigation,
So its behind these back in to there, we usually recommend, let’s run PVC into there, to there, and then to work off of that. But they don’t want to change it, so we’re not going to argue. But we will redo these lines
Completely because the more tieins you have, the more leaks you’re going to have in long run, so. As we continue to work our way back, we’re going to check all irrigation to make sure there isn’t anything leaking because there are a couple of red flags back here. Like,
You know, the fact that there’s still a trench and then there’s this line just sitting here. That’s a red flag. They claim that that was just old and that isnt doing anything. But it’s hard to trust a company that says that when they threaten the customer and leave it like
This. So here’s another quote. Looking forward to this one kind of something like this. We kind of have to upsell because it’s kind of not our mess and we don’t know what else we’ll find when trying to work through it. Like, how packed is that? How long
Will that take us? Stuff like that. So a little upsell, but that’s the way it is So I don’t know how much of this will actually make the video, but this is another bid that I’m putting together, and this is for a HOA. So this is for maintenance related stuff. And
Really what I’m walking through here, what I’m really interested in, is just how many bushes, how much grass, how thick is the rock. And that matters because, you know, if it’s thin like this, it’s kind of like, you know, we’re going to need a set the irrigation to water more
Around the bushes. We can expect to have to spend more time weeding because, I mean, more sunlight is getting down directly into the dirt. Yeah. So it’s just kind of figuring out how much rock do they have. How big is the area? How many trees,
How many bushes? And once we get that number, we’re able to kind of come up with a quote. So I’m going to video this whole thing going because will be helpful for me to look later. So I’m coming right into the property right away. And this is actually a separate line
Item that we’re going to give them. They’re kind of interested in changing this over to turf. Just so they don’t have to have it mowed than once a week in the summer. And this would be a pretty
Easy one to turf. We have plenty of room to kind of sneak a ditch witch in here, just kind of straight down the line and then base it, turf it. And then as we work our way around here, another line
Item that we’re going to add a separate bit is changing this fountain over into a planter box. Really not going to do much besides fill us up with dirt. And then just add a drip line and do some perennials.
When I look through here, you know, I’m looking for things that add a little more maintenance, like citrus. That’s a little more maintenance. Like, we’re gonna have to clean up after the citrus trees, stuff like that. I’m Bougainville’s. That’s a lot of maintenance.
They’re dirty. They just. They shut a lot. And then as we work our way around, like. You know, really, this isn’t bad. Like, we can trim this once a month and. Really the exterior shrubs. They’re leaving those shrubs as individuals.
So there’s more trimming in between. It is important to realize, like we would be in charge of all the bushes, like in the front side of the house. With that being the case, like we’re going to blow this whole thing once a month.
So we probably blow like, you know, all the entrance ways, all the sidewalks, all the little driveways, and we’re going to blow everything that way. There are a couple of trees that. Are going dormant for the season.
That’s leaves that we have to clean up. This would almost require us to come by weekly just to clean this up. If they didn’t have this tree, we could just come once a month.
And for some reason, the way it was set up in a way that they have a bunch of little hidden bushes behind the garbage. There are more bushes back here and then really, I mean, and they have almost on the whole property. So you can see this would require some maintenance.
We had some shedding from this mosquit. I’m just blowing this off and blown it out. So they’re considering just getting rid of some of the bushes save money, which I totally get. Another thing is like just being aware of like, you know, we probably have to out
Around these garbage is so just taking a peek in here where there might be debris is getting that out of there. So it’s clean for them when they’re throwing stuff away. As we work our way around. We still got some bigger bushes through here.
Being aware that we got a few more trees that will trump to eight feet. Some things were poorly planted. And I guess for looking at this like this obviously is way too big for this corner. So you really got to cut it back.
As we continue to walk through here like it’s relatively straightforward. You got some you got some larger bushes in here that we got to trim lantana. Those are going to grow more and more in the summer. Got some poems form out of that and you can
See there’s kind of a mix, so. Most of the stuff is very. Circular. You’ve got that round edge cylindrical. But then you have people like right there. Like that is a very organic cut. So they’re just letting that grow naturally.
Sorry, this is the front of the show and it’s going to be a little loud due to the cars. But you can see some more bushes to trim. One thing that really needs to be kept up on is
The trash. So if we come out here biweekly, we’ve got to do a walk through of the trash. Looks like definitely collects in this corner. And then. We’re going to give him a quote for giving a rock refreshed through the entire way,
But we’re going to separate it out. So one of the quotes will be just for doing the front. In the front along there, too. They got a quote for 12 grand to do that. I think that seems a
Bit steep, but we’ll have to do the math on it. I’m going to assume this is a an Apache Brown. It looks like more of a patch brown. Maybe it’s a table. I guess. I don’t know. So trimming these all throughout. And then we’ll have to crop this tree,
Make sure we keep the suckers going up. And through here still involves just, you know, trimming and blowing up keep. And you can see they got a lot of shrubs in this corner. So blowing out all this, which will be a little more tricky because you got
The road here, so you got blow it down and in to clean it up because they’ll be hard to clean up right on the street. But yeah, we got a few more trees and plenty more shrubs that have been, you know, destroyed. So, yeah, I’m through irrigation,
A bit of irrigation to check, you can see. Maintenance company was here on Tuesday and we’re all guilty of this, but they left trimmings. That doesn’t look great. So Gives a pretty strong idea of how we quote things.
There was really no big projects in the last couple of days to quote, so. Bummer. But all of these maintenance jobs, all these smaller jobs, they are easy. They’re just a few things that you got to think through. And once you have enough experience,
You’ll just naturally, naturally come up with those problems and you’ll know to look for them and you’ll think them through. So. So with that, I hope you enjoyed just, looking at some of these quotes and kind of how we walked through them.
Let me know if it was helpful, if you liked it, if you hated it, and will either do more of them or we won’t. So thanks for watching. I love all of you. See you next time.
2 Comments
So much knowledge and understanding, thank you for telling us
Landscaping is an important investment that can bring many benefits to you and your community. With careful planning and investing in maintenance, you can create a beautiful, healthy, and people-friendly landscape.