Trees, plants, the smell of freshly cut grass in the morning, I love it all! I keep dreaming about having the ultimate backyard landscape, a place I can sit and relax with a nice cup of tea and/or entertain friends for lunches and dinners. Unfortunately, whilst I love all things outdoors and I consider myself a green thumb, I am not great with all of the manual labour needed to complete landscaping which doesn’t look DIY but looks like it was done by professionals. I also feel there is a real skill to landscape design and whilst I definitely have an interest in it, it is something that you can tell when it has been done by a professional.

I have been thinking about my backyard for months, do I want to redo it myself? Or do I want to engage a professional to do it? If I do it myself it would probably take months and to be honest I know I would make mistakes so the cost would probably end up exceeding what I would pay someone to do it anyway. If I brought someone in to do the work, it would get done fairly quickly and would no doubt look terrific providing I chose the right company. I went back and forth between both options before deciding to get a professional to redo my backyard.

Let me set the scene. I live in a small townhouse like complex in Sydney. I have a smallish backyard which still has enough room for some plants, grass etc. I love spending time outdoors and I currently have a fairly good garden in my current backyard. The problem is, it doesn’t look fantastic like the many examples you see on the internet such as these from Houzz.

I started to scour the web to try and find some examples of what I would like my backyard to look like. There were a heap of different landscaping companies available but I wanted to see photo examples of work done in backyards similar to mind. I stumbled across this company called Sand and Stone Landscapes. What I liked about their photos was that I could see two which were too dissimilar to what I was dealing with such as this:

Example One

Example Two

Judging from their website the first example is from a townhouse in Balmain, whilst I love the look of what they have done I don’t need somewhere to park the car (I have a garage to the side of my townhouse) so would prefer to use my space for more grass and plants.

The second example I have attached is fantastic! I love how they have a perfect mix of entertaining area plus garden space, plus lawn. Having something similar to this in my backyard will allow me to maintain my green thumb (plus I want to share all my success and failure with you here on my blog).

I will be giving Luke a buzz to sort out a price and to discuss the work I want to have completed. This also got me thinking, I want my blog to be a good resource for people who share common interests such as myself. I found myself working through a checklist of sorts when choosing which landscape company I wanted to go with so I figured I should share it with you here.

My checklist for choosing a landscaping company

• Are they a ‘one man band’ or do they have a team of people employed to get the job done properly? I would prefer a team of people.
• Is their website, nice, clean and up-to-date? I know this has nothing to do with the quality of work they deliver but it means something to me, if the website is old I feel like the company may be struggling to make ends meet.
• Have they been around for a few years? I want to know that they will be around for at least a few more years should I have a need for any further work to be done down the track.
• Do they have photo examples of work they have completed on their website? Are they good?
• Do they have photo examples of work that would fit with what you require to be done?
• Are they licensed and have an ABN?
• Are there some nice testimonials which show customer feedback? This might be on their own website or via their facebook page.
• Have they won any industry awards which verify the quality of their work?