I hated visualization exercises.
I despised them through and through. Every Ted Talk about “mindful awareness” and “imagining your success as pagoda” was just never my vibe. I knew that “new agey” stuff had benefits in some people’s lives, but I simply just cannot and will not sit still for that long.
However, I recently had a complete change of heart. While looking at some images of beautiful backyards on the internet, I had this passing thought: What would my backyard look like if money wasn’t a factor?
Almost subconsciously, a lush, multileveled, sophisticated model of my dream backyard came to life. Since I have long since been impressed by the architecture in the San Diego area, cacti and mission-style fountains detailed my imaginary landscape. It was tranquil, classy, and perfect.
But that’s not something I can afford — ripping apart my backyard and putting it back together again. How much would something like that even cost?
Well, the art of landscaping in San Diego is so much more than design. As you can imagine, there are bad landscapers and good landscapers. A bad landscaper will take advantage of a client with a bigger budget, encouraging them to make tons of completely unnecessary renovations to increase the overall cost. A good landscaper, on the other hand, will make an active effort to hear your ideas. Many clients will actually end up paying significantly less than they originally thought since the landscaper is on the client’s side.
For example, let’s say you wanted a mission-style backyard with lots of patio space. The landscaper will ask the proper leading questions, i.e. “Why do you want the patio space? Is it so you can have areas for guests to congregate? We have had success with a veranda over existing patio spaces (instead of just adding more patio), and the clients have found this matches their vision and saves them thousands on patio installation. Would you be interested in exploring that option?”
A good landscaper can also make a “dream backyard renovation that’s a splurge but who cares” vision into an affordable, feasible project. Most people envision complete backyard renovations as night and day — the before and after pictures look absolutely nothing like each other. However, a smart landscaper knows which natural features of the landscape are good to keep. This increases the authenticity of the renovation as they design “with the grain” of nature, and it also keeps the cost down for the client. So in this case, conversations with guests who see the newly renovated backyard would sound like this:
“Oh my gosh, it looks amazing! What did you do?”
“Literally just leveled out that hill so we could have a raised dining area and lined the natural creek with stones. Oh and some tanbark around the flowers to make the lines between the garden and lawn more distinct. But yeah that’s pretty much it. We originally wanted to do a lot more but our landscaper knew that we basically wanted things to look neater. So he showed us there were much more affordable ways to go about than bulldozing the whole and starting from scratch. Apparently, we were three details away from our dream backyard all along.”
Is this a conversation you would like to have? Lucky for you, there are several certified landscaping companies in San Diego that can make this dream a reality.
Here is one of our favorites:
Torrey Pines Landscape Co.
(858) 454-1433
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