JOHN BENEKE LANDSCAPE ARCHITEC

He is very practical, and listened to what I wanted to accomplish.

Living on the side of a hill, we have always had an erosion problem that washed our side yard down to the back fence. During hard rains the runoff would flood our neighbor's backyard and patio. We had contacted several landscape architects and never really felt good about what they wanted to do. We finally called John and he met with us. John looked at our issue and discussed our concerns and gave his suggestions on how he would resolve the issue. Of all the landscape architects we met John's suggestions seemed to address all our concerns including the impact on our neighbors. John also discussed things that we could do to save money and time. During our meeting John gave us two options, he would charge a flat fee and just draw up the plans and let us get the bids and hire the landscape contractor, or for a percentage of the job he would draw up the plans get the bids and once we picked the bid we were happy with he would work with the contractor to see that the job was completed per the plans. We chose the latter. After meeting with us John drew up the plans that would resolve all our issues and complete the back and side yards. We did discuss a budget but he said it would be best to go ahead and do the entire plan then we could do what we could afford now and always come back later and finish when we could afford it After the plans were drawn he met with us again to go over the design and make sure we were happy with it and that it met all our needs. The design was better than we could have ever expected but he warned us that it might be beyond our budget and with that in mind when he got the bids he had them itemized so that we could see what we could afford and what would have to wait. John got the bids from contractors that he had worked with in the past and felt comfortable with their quality of work. When John got the bids he met with us again and went over them. As we went over the bids John suggested that if we could do a little bit of the work ourselves we could afford to get the complete job done. We chose the bid that we wanted to go with and John got the ball rolling on getting the job done. John worked with the us and the contractor closely to make sure the job was being done per the plans. He had us call him if there were any concerns and came by during each stage of the job to make sure everything was going as planned. He was good to address any concerns with the contractor and keep us to date on the progress. John is very detail oriented and made sure everything was done per his specifications. The job turned out great and we are enjoying our backyard again. I would not hesitate to use John again and would highly recommend him to anyone needing any type of landscape design.