In order to meet rising demand without spreading ourselves too thin, we now have a minimum for some services. We are still offering hourly consultation, landscape design sketches, plants (via our Garden In A Truck program) and affordable labor (via the “DIY with Help” program) to everyone. But we now have a minimum of $5000 for most packages that include project management (i.e. comprehensive calculations/budgeting and supervision of “DIY with Help” installations).
If you are imagining spending more than $5000 on your project in total, then these changes don’t apply to you. (You can stop reading.)
Also, if all you want is a crevice garden, then you fall into the one exception to our new rule. Those are so fun to build that we have no minimum for crevice/rock gardens.
Otherwise, if your budget is under $5000 total, then we recommend you take on the project management yourself, using resources that we provide to help make that easy:
- The DIY Guide currently covers planning and installation pretty comprehensively. We’ll be improving it this winter to include a package of spreadsheets for calculations and budgeting, along with a more detailed resource directory.
- Again, you can still book us hourly for consultation and landscape design, as well as have us select and source plants for you.
- The “DIY with Help” workday program, which is similar to a paid village barn-raising, is still available to clients with small budgets/small projects…with one significant change.
- The “DIY with Help” program has, for the past four years, only been available with RLD staff present to co-supervise and manage the installation. In 2025, the workdays are also going to be available to DIYers and low-budget clients without RLD project managers being on-site, which will keep the costs lower (and allow RLD to help more people without spreading ourselves too thin). RLD will arrange the workday schedule with our network of independent helpers, but the clients will manage and supervise the workdays themselves. A team leader will be on site to bring experience and extra tools, and RLD will provide clients with a detailed planning checklist for the workday. As always, this option is only available for help with low-risk work like planting and mulching, and all helpers and clients sign waivers.
To learn more, check out our new homepage.