Plenty of what gets sold as landscape design is a pretty picture and a plant list. That is a mood board. Here is what a plan you can actually build from contains.
A measured base plan
Property lines, the building footprint, existing trees with trunk diameters and canopy spreads, utilities, and spot elevations. If the designer never measured anything, nothing drawn on top of it is reliable.
A grading and drainage plan
Where water currently goes and where it will go afterwards. This is the single most-skipped drawing and the source of the most expensive failures.
A dimensioned layout
Every hardscape element located and sized. A crew should be able to set out the terrace from the drawing without phoning anyone.
A planting plan with quantities
Species, sizes at installation, quantities, and spacing. “Mixed perennials” is not a specification — it is a blank cheque.
An irrigation zone diagram
At minimum, which areas share a valve. Grouping thirsty and drought-tolerant planting on one zone guarantees one of them is always wrong.
A line-item budget
Costs broken out by element, so you can phase it or trim it intelligently. A single lump sum gives you nothing to make decisions with.
Two questions worth asking
Who owns the drawings afterwards, and can you take them to another contractor? A designer confident in their pricing will not hesitate on either.
