Landscaping by Design

We were very happy with the work done by Gary and his team at Landscaping by Design. We had Gary completely redo our backyard on Capitol Hill in DC. All of the existing fencing and hardscape was removed and we installed new cedar fencing, a patio area, a parking area,lighted garden beds and a stone bench. All of this in a narrow DC yard (16x120).

We did not contract LBD for design services; we did most of that ourselves (just looking at pictures online). But Gary did a good job of looking at our ideas and helping us see if there were any clear problems. He was always happy to meet with us in person or talk on the phone. And he went with us when we selected hardscaping materials.

The only real con to the entire process with LBD is that the job did not go quickly. A job that was scheduled for a few weeks stretched into a few months. There were weather delays for sure and Gary was also working other jobs. However the delays didn’t bother us much at all. First, Gary was very clear up front that if we had a strict timeline he wasn’t probably our guy. Second, we were more interested in quality than speed.

I’m reluctant to write numbers because I have no idea what the scope of your project would be. But I always wish someone would give some indication as to price. So for all the work described above, plus a new garage door (about $5k), but without any actual plantings (we did that part ourselves), the total cost was just over $40k. Yes that’s a lot of money, but some of that came from our choices — the cedar fence was over $10k. And some of the cost was the quality we were paying for. Gary put a lot of work into making sure that the new yard would drain well and making sure that the ground under the hardscaping was well-prepared. That preparation took a lot of work.