Definitive guide How to Hire a Barrie Landscaping Company

10 critical ground breaking benefits & risks involved in your decision how to hire the right landscape company in Barrie, Ontario, & Simcoe County for your landscape needs. Being a homeowner comes with it's own set of responsibilities & challenges besides having to efficiently evaluate a highly skilled masonry-style, interlocking stone trade you have little to no experience in. Not a decision to take lightly, especially when thousands of dollars of investment, the resale value of your home, the protection of your belongings, & you & your family's safety are at risk .  Make your choice after serious consideration of the relevant criteria, & adequate research.

In cities such as Barrie, & large spanning communities, like Simcoe County, homeowners can be preyed upon by high end marketing that isn't held to accountability, because the world around us is operating at such a fast pace.  

Unlike  e-commerce,  & online shopping for a product, masonry-style, hardscape, landscaping, is a highly customized hands on purchase & investment, graded by skill & expertise from real work experience. You are evaluating more than a product for shape, colour, & price. You are entrusting the landscaping team that you hire to execute from design to finish, all levels necessary on an earth moving experience at a significant investment.  

As such, it is with prudence that you should make your choice of the right landscaping professional for your needs. When dealing with moving the earth around your home, remember, it's your investment & you should feel confident in asking important questions.  

The following collaborative list of expert landscaping advice delivers key factors in the consideration of one of your most important home improvement decisions: How to hire the right landscape professional in Barrie, Simcoe County & areas for the residential homeowner, exterior home improvement, landscape projects.  There is a huge variation in what you get with your investment. 

Paying more or less doesn't always ensure you'll get what you need.  Landscaping in Barrie, & Simcoe County.  Don't be absorbed by a smooth talking salesman, check out who & how they will completing your project & their credibility before you sign.  At Tough Oaks Landscaping we perform to exceed all these expectations & more:

1. Landscaping is a general term, that needs further definition.  There are many types of landscape professionals whom complete different types of projects, with a different set of skills & a different set of tools.  What type of landscape professional do you require, Do you need a hardscape landscaper, a lawn cutter, or a gardener

2. Who does the team promise to complete the work?  How will quality control be executed? Homeowners, often assume that the sales staff present at the consultation are the same individuals responsible for actually completing the work, while this is not always the case.

3. Ask for a written quote with a full description outlining what will be covered for the price that is offered to you to have the work completed.

4. If you are comparing other landscape contractors make sure they are quoting on the exact same features, with the same square footage & quality of products. Make sure they have included the details of what you asked for in the quote. Compare apples to apples, not apples to oranges. You may find what you thought to be the best choice by price is not giving you nearly what you are getting for a comprehensive quote.

5. Research reviews, or references. Make sure they are from real clients. Hiring a friend of a friend may make it awkward on the homeowner, if they have to enforce a warranty.

6. View some of their projects  before deciding, & signing a contract to see the quality of their work.  It is a real shock, & nothing is worse for a client than what we have seen when an inexperienced contractor takes on a project beyond their skill level & bails out on the client. We have seen it happen in Barrie & helped out many clients in this situation. Masonry- style hardscape, landscaping is a highly skilled trade which requires precision & expertise that develops over many years of training.

7. Make sure you can see the signs of a reputable landscape contractor. Are they licensed, & insured, do they arrange the utility locates before excavation, if not you could be financially responsible if they accidentally hit a gas or utility line or cause an explosion, or if they get hurt on your property. 

8.  Does the contractor include in their costs & acknowledge that steps, walkways, patios, driveways all require different amounts of digging out of the clay & substrate. How far are they willing to dig. Are they planning on correctly preparing the excavations dig site with proper fill & proper compaction rate. Excavation & proper fill are key in stabilizing the interlock & stone that is placed on the surface. Excavation increases the cost of projects by thousands of dollars, so if the quote you receive is out of alignment with others, it could be an indication that the proper excavation is not being accounted for, or even planned.  With out these proper ground preparation measures, the predominate cost of the brick, block or stone could be lost, if the project shifts dramatically it could  cause flooding issues to your home, or tripping hazards, wasting more money than if your wouldn't have decided to go with the direction of the lower quote.

9. Will they be in business in the future for accountability of their warranty? Find out the length & coverage of the warranty. Remember it is much more costly to have to redo a hardscape project than to do it correctly the first time. The materials used in stonework landscaping require skill. Saving upfront costs often force your hand to pay 10 fold to fix installation mistakes.

10. Material costs fill a huge portion of what you are paying for in a landscaping project. Make sure the contractor that you hire is in good standing with their suppliers. According to Mike Holmes, you want to check the contractors suppliers to make sure they are honest enough to pay their bills on time. If not, you may find yourself financially responsible for the materials you have already paid for to the contractor. 

Include us in your comparison of quality landscaping professionals in Barrie & area, to exceed the landscaping industry standards & deliver to you a landscape of heirloom quality.

We can relate to homeowners facing seemingly endless responsibilities & decisions regarding maintenance & protection of their home investment. 

We are the expert trusted landscaping professionals. With Tough Oaks Landscaping initiating from a small town in Northern Ontario,  we were held to the highest level of accountability for performance, & we succeeded on all levels. Expanding our business to Simcoe County has opened our eyes to trending differences in today's landscaping market. For a business to succeed in a small community everyone knows your work & your ability to succeed depends on how good your last project & everyone's project before that holds up to in the long run over seasons of severe weather changes.  

Feel free to contact us at any stage, whether you have thought about your yard for a long time or you are new to considering the landscaping options, the possibilities of a beautiful or functional stone & greenery landscape, step, walkway, patio  deck , interlocking driveway , garden bed, lawn or other feature, await you.

To start the ball rolling, for our no obligation FREE LANDSCAPE QUOTE please submit the provided CONTACT FORM  to us or email us directly.