Inside & Out Landscape Design

I usually don't post reviews, but I am just disappointed and just feel ripped off. Although our final design was good, our final bill was not. Tara provided an estimate of cost at our first meeting of 3500 which was to include "site measurement, base plan and planting plan." She came out to our house 3 times to present and/or measure and she presented three plans (all 3 were variations of each other) at our first meeting. She even had made a mistake on one of the plans that was "cut and pasted" wrong. We ended up asking her to do a small revision (what we thought was minor) of a wall and she ended up billing us $5800!! Her explanation was that per the contract which I signed, it says she charges for meetings, emails, phone calls and travel as well as the revision work. When I told her that no extra trips were made due to the revision, we were told that the bulk of the extra cost was her time coming to our house "4-5 times, measure etc". So, what did the original estimate cover then since you need to come to our house to measure and actually do the job? Her measurements ended up being quite erroneous as well as our contractor has continually pointed out. Though she was willing to discuss this issue, and gave us $500 off (hence two stars) bringing our bill to still a ghastly $5300, what was not clear or ever explained then was what the $3500 covered. I assume that if you estimate something, you estimate based on what is needed to do the job (come out to measure, create the plan, and present the plan as the contract says). I'm ok with being charged extra for ADDITIONAL time needed due to a revision, but I guess it doesn't work out that way. Lastly, she mentioned that she was also supposed to do a final release of all documents in person and collect payment. Luckily, we had decided to just have her email the documents, otherwise my bill would have been even higher. My advice, find out what is included in her estimate. Our extra work did not constitute a 65% increase in cost. Or just find someone who is better at knowing what they want to charge and is will to present that number to you up front. This way of doing business is just not right.

It was a pleasure working with Tara. She is an expert in her field. The first time we met with her, she wanted to know what we wanted to do with our yard. She did not come with a pre planned landscape to sell us, instead, she wanted to create a landscape with us. At our next meeting she had everything drawn out on paper and sat patiently, answering all of our questions, with great clarity and insight as we reviewed each of her drawings in detail. She had the ability to incorporate all our ideas into her her plan, in a way that created a design more beautiful than we could have ever imagined on our own. We were thinking of taking out our our old Mulberry tree, but she convinced us that she could do something very special with it, and that we would appreciate the shade it would provide during the summer. We are so very grateful that we listened to her. She brought to life, the area underneath our old tree, creating a beautiful focal point, for our back yard. We feel very grateful to have worked with Tara and would highly recommend her to anyone interested in landscaping their home.

Tara was a pro. She deliverered everything she promised and made sure we were happy with her design. She listened to everything we needed, and contributed valuable new ideas to our design. Her preparation was excellent and made it easy to shop our project out to several contractors. Our landscaping is beautiful and gets consistent raves from guests to our home. She also consistently was engaged with a positive attitude. I am happy to reccommend Inside and Out Landscape Design.