At a social function recently, I ran into a friend who also is a former
client. In the course of small talk, she asks, "So how's the gardening business?"I politely responded and continued our conversation, though inside I was seething. We did a fairly large project for this woman, including a pretty substantial stone patio and a pretty cool water feature. Yes, there were plants too, and plenty of them. Furthermore, I know she is active in her garden club. One would THINK she would know that there is a difference between what I do and what "gardening" is.
Am I a gardener? Sure. But that's at home. My chosen career is landscape design.
What are you? Do you deliberately choose what vocabulary to you use when discussing your profession. If you don't, you ought to.
Are you a landscaper? Gardener? Landscape architect? Landscape designer? Landscape contractor? If you are a professional, you ought to use words that sound professional. It's all part of your image.
Put yourself in the shoes of someone not in our industry. What image does the term "landscaper" conjure up? Perhaps that is the image you want. For me, no.What I do is equal parts art and science. In order to do what I do, and do it well, I need to understand bits and pieces of many other professions. Among those professions, I count civil engineer, architect, horticulturist, environmentalist, carpenter/woodworker, ironsmith, mason, plumber, electrician, and more. How many of those are "gardening"? One. Is gardening an important element? Certainly. But I'm not in the gardening business.
How do we communicate these things to someone not in the industry? I don't know. It's hard enough to communicate them to people IN the industry!
More on this topic later. The cicadas are coming.
5 comments:
It is very true that words create an image or give us a challenge to educate other persons.
We are landscape designers, as you said, and need to explain that over and over so the public at large realizes that they are working with an artistic person with a multitude of talents and know-how.
Some clients insist to refer to me as "their architect" and I do rephrase that and replace it with a landscape designer or garden designer.
A portfolio, either on the internet or in hand, most often shows much better what we design and install: seeing is believing.
Instead of seething inside I would try to turn that remark into a challenge to educate that client with some humor.
Take the opportunity to show what was involved creating their garden or some other garden.
We need to trealize that the word landscape designer is not registered, still creates confusion and it is up to us to make sure that they understand what our profession does and can do!
Nicolien van Schouwen
European Garden Design
Tim,
I refer to myself as a garden designer, mostly to separate myself from the people in my local area who call themselves landscapers or landscape designers. What are your feelings regarding Garden Designer versus Landscape Designer?
Defining what we residential LAs do is always something of a challenge for me.......our value is a subtle commodity in a marketplace that generally thinks in terms of "stuff" vs. solutions. Plus, we walk a fine line, defending the notion of 'place-making' as a true craft, without appearing that we somehow look down our noses at the details of good horticulture.
A few specific things I try to follow: (1) always dress professionally, nice enough to talk to cultured clients but not so nice you alienate the guys swinging shovels an hour later --- no blue jeans or polo shirts; (2) they're ALWAYS "clients", not customers; (3) cultivate in clients the more-abstract concepts of 'How would it feel to move through that space?' rather than 'This tree is the species you want b/c it has pink blossoms.' The latter is important too, but not before going through the former. And sometimes, you do have to touch a bit on the latter early-on, just to establish credibility so they don't think you only have your head in the clouds; (4) this one's tricky: assume your client has the $$ resources to do it well --- yet still show you're sensitive to their budget & capabilities. To focus too much on the high costs, almost apologetically, can be a bit insulting to some people, and positions your services in that client's mind as "just another contractor" out of the Yellow Pages competing on price. Again, we're not selling "stuff", we're providing customized, personalized solutions. We've been hired not to provide a certain product at the cheapest price, but rather to spend their money in the most effective, best-value way. Sometimes that means a dramatic, huge (= costly) perennial border, sometimes it means the essence of simplicity with a simple well-defined panel of lawn.
This is very interesting to me and I wonder if there are regional variations. One of my mentors suggested I not use the word "landscape" in my business name, but rather "garden", as in garden design rather than landscape design. His experience was that here in the desert southwest, people would be calling me to haul out their debris and clean up their yards if I used the word landscape in my company name.
Tim,
I love your love affair with words. You're as much a wordsmith as you are a "landsmith."
Later,
Aunt Nan
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