On July 11, Austin Travers and Zara Wirkus, Affil. ASLA, from Hoerr Schaudt’s Continued Landscape Management Team joined the Planting Design Professional Practice Network (PPN) for their latest Plants and Design Chat. The focus was maintenance, both what has worked and what hasn’t, with an emphasis on successes and how you got there. What’s your protocol for talking about maintenance with clients? Do you have a plan for maintenance? When and how do you communicate this information to the client? How do you maintain design intent? Maintenance is an evergreen hot topic.
Austin and Zara kicked things off by defining continued landscape management. The goal is to stay involved with the client and make sure the vision created with the client comes to fruition three, four, or five years down the road after installation.
Hoerr Schaudt’s Continued Landscape Management Team is a group of seven that brings together several different skillsets, including a master arborist, two licensed landscape architects, and seasonal color specialist.
For each project that engages the team, they average three site visits per year in the spring, summer, and fall. These visits entail a meeting with the client and contractor to talk about what’s working and what’s not working at each point in the year. It’s important not to focus exclusively on what isn’t working. Make a point to let the contractor know the good things that are happening are noticed and appreciated.