What to Expect When Crews Arrive
Every year we visit hundreds of promising project sites and create just as many estimates and proposals. Our great designers work hard during the cold months designing new landscapes for backyards, commercial properties, and everything in between. Sometimes, the time spent carefully developing a site plan can seem like it takes just as long as it takes to build it. But after the design has been finalized, and the deposit paid, what can you expect to happen as your project makes the exciting leap from our offices into the real world?
To be honest, the first thing you can expect to do–is wait! Here in Minnesota, even during the warm months, unexpected weather can push back a project’s start date. Combine that with a late Spring, an early Winter, or a rainy Summer and . . . you get the idea. But when all the waiting is over what happens first?
A few days before your project’s start date we’ll have all the utilities marked. This is to help our construction crews avoid them as they work and our legal obligation as a licensed and insured contractor. We certainly don’t like or intend to hit any utility lines and with more and more of our clients working from home, we understand the frustration and inconvenience it can cause if an accident does occur. In the case a line is hit, the fact that we had them marked before we started work, allows us to have them fixed for you.
Getting a new landscape is exciting, and the first phases of construction are the most action packed! In the first few days you’ll have trucks, trailers, workers, and construction equipment showing up. Depending on the needs and scale of your project, we’ll have dumpsters brought in for demolition and removal of old site materials along with trailers of tools for our workers. Usually these will be parked somewhere on your street, and many will only be needed for small periods of the total construction project. And finally, somewhere out of sight, we may even find space for a portable bathroom–it saves time that would be wasted running to the gas station, and generally makes everyone happier and more relaxed!
The flurry of activity in the opening stages of a project’s installation is when things are moving at their fastest and noisiest. Removing old hardscape (The retaining wall you’ve always hated) digging out old plants (The shrubs that died two Summers ago) or excavating old drainage (The part of your yard that always floods when it rains) is often the easiest, fastest, and noisiest portion of the whole experience. Thankfully for your neighborhood’s atmosphere and ambiance, the commotion is short-lived and purposeful. However, the speed at which ‘demo’ happens is also deceptive.
The thrill at watching your property undergo these rapid changes can evaporate once the real construction begins and things seem to slow to a crawl–did the workers run out of steam or something? When the dumpster full of old site material on your street disappears and the pallets of new pavers, edging, or plants arrive is when things slow down and our workers become deliberate and focused in an entirely different way than before. Entire workdays can have the stillness of high-noon in August as we measure, layout and check our work. It can seem like nothing is happening as we’ll lay, and re-lay the base course of wall block several times, checking for level and fit before we finally add adhesive and move on to the next course. Watching the base layers of rock and chip for a patio get put in and leveled can be like watching paint dry. But, before you know it, you’ll be watching new pavers appear and creep across your yard, creating the patterns you first saw on paper months ago. The painstaking and methodical work pays off in a beautiful and welcoming yard that can withstand daily use for years while resisting the harsh Minnesota Winters and their destructive freeze-thaw cycles.
As the installation reaches its final stages, some of the last things to be added are the plants. The living, breathing elements of the project that seem to anchor the inert hardscapes to the green Earth. Usually as they are being planted and mulched, our workers will be cleaning up other parts of the project. Removing equipment, washing off footprints, hunting for wind blown trash; the final stretch of the installation has a return of the energy that dominated its first few days. And just like that, its done, with only regular watering and irrigation to set the pace of the days that follow project completion.
When the trucks and trailers leave for the last time, we’ll send someone by to inspect things and take some documentary pictures (If you want copies, let us know!) before wrapping up the closing paperwork. Finally, the very last thing that we do is stop by again months later or more, to take some more pictures and see how our plants and materials weather and grow in the landscape. This how we get our practical landscaping knowledge, knowledge that we’ve been building for over fifty years at Hartman Companies.