Landscape Installation
A finished yard is four trades worth of decisions taken in the right order. Get the order wrong and the good work gets dug up to fix the work that came before it.
One crew, one sequence
Grading, irrigation, sod, planting and lighting are usually four or five separate visits from four or five separate companies, each arriving to find the last one's work in the way. FlowCon does all of it, so the sequence gets planned once: ground shaped first, everything that lives under the surface next, soil and turf and planting on top, fixtures aimed last.
That is not a small saving. Irrigation lines and low-voltage lighting cable run through the same ground at similar depths. Done together it is one set of cuts. Done a year apart it is a second set through a lawn that has only just established.
What an install covers
- Grading and drainage, so water leaves the property away from the house rather than pooling against it.
- Topsoil at a depth roots can live in, over a base that has been broken up rather than skimmed.
- Irrigation zoned for what will actually be growing there, designed before anything is planted.
- Sod laid tight and rolled, or beds prepared and planted where the design calls for that instead.
- Low-voltage lighting run in the same pass and aimed after dark once the planting is in.
New builds
What a builder leaves behind is usually compacted subsoil with a thin skim of topsoil over it, graded to suit the machines rather than the house. On a new build that is the whole job: the base has to be made into something a lawn can live in before anything green arrives. Sod laid straight onto builder's fill browns off in its first dry spell no matter what the sod cost.
Working into a yard that already exists
On an established property the constraint is access and what is already finished. Mature planting, a patio, a driveway machines cannot cross. The work gets planned around those rather than through them, and that planning happens on site, walking it with you, rather than off a drawing.
What is not on the list
FlowCon builds the soft landscape and everything that runs under it. Hardscape construction, patios, retaining walls and stonework are a different trade and are not part of what we do. If a design needs them, it is better to say so at the quote than halfway through the job.
Landscape installs, asked and answered
Do you do a whole yard, or just parts of one?
Either. A full install is grading, irrigation, sod or beds, and lighting in one planned sequence. Plenty of jobs are one piece of that, added to a yard that already exists.
Do you build patios or retaining walls?
No. FlowCon does the soft landscape, the irrigation under it and the lighting through it. Hardscape construction is a different trade, and it is better to know that at the quote than later.
Is it actually cheaper to do it all at once?
For the parts that share a trench, genuinely yes. Irrigation and lighting cable run through the same ground, so together they are one set of cuts instead of two, and the second set would have to go through a finished lawn.
What order does the work happen in?
Ground shaping and drainage, then anything buried, then soil, then turf and planting, then fixtures aimed at night. Work done out of that order tends to get disturbed by the step that should have come before it.
How long does a full install take?
It depends on the size of the property, how much has to come out first, and how machines get in. You will get a realistic schedule at the quote rather than an optimistic one.