Judith Phillips Design Oasis

Judith came over many years ago to help with a landscape plan. I thought is was an informal consultation, she charged me about 2 hours ($125/hr) for an informal hand drawing of a landscape plan not to scale. I think she's a true professional and expert in her trade, but I expected something a little more clean/professional in terms of the finished plan, not just some notes on grid paper. Either the price should have been much lower, or the finished plan should have been much better detailed.

We are planning to re-do our yard. Along with other landscaping companies, we contacted Judith Phillips. It is important to note that she is not a landscaping company; she is a landscape architect. She only generates designs and does not do installation. As a result, she charges for the design work (whereas most landscape installation companies generate the design as part of the free estimate). She informed us up front that she charged $80/hour. She proposed coming out to see the yard and that based on what she saw, she would either sketch out ideas there or would take notes home and send us a design later. She arrived on time and spent a little over an hour talking to us. She then spent around a half hour out measuring things in the yard. At the end, she declared that she would go home and work up a draft design. We asked about what that would entail, and her response was that she didn't know but probably 10 hours. She also said that due to some upcoming event, she wouldn't be able to get it to us until the following month (3-4 weeks later). After she left, we decided that we were unwilling to sink $800 into a design that we knew nothing about. We emailed her that night that we didn't want her to continue working on the design. We followed up with a phone message the next day (Sunday). She returned both on Monday morning. She informed us that she had already spent about 3 hours and would send us the current draft. The design arrived quickly (she mailed it the same day), and while interesting, had ignored a couple of our requests (e.g., we have small kids and had wanted to keep most of the turf in the back yard; she reduced the turf by almost 72%). The final bill came to 3.5 hours (and an additional $8 for photocopying and mailing).