Problem Slope, and Contractor

Hillside, below, at a client's yesterday.

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Retained with groundcover.

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Retained with great success for decades.

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Her neighbor had the same slope, the builder put in railroad tie walls.  Of course they rotted & collapsed.  Worse, the 'fix' was more retaining walls.  

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No need to be an expert to understand the math, aka expense.

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Aside from which is more beautiful.

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It is not uncommon for a percentage of my clients to go with another contractor, because they trust the 'guy' saying they must build a retaining wall.  The comfort zone of manhandling a situation.

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Across Europe, studying historic beautiful landscapes for decades, eye/brain, aka beautiful/functional, noticed 'details'.  Especially in Italy.  No place better to learn about beautiful easy landscapes, surviving thousands of years.  I trust historic beautiful landscapes, and copy them.

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After my longtime contractor died, and before my current dream contractor of several years, I had the guy-in-a-truck.  Good, but fearful of what he did not know, and crunching/squeezing numbers with every 'sale'.  

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He refused to drystack stones into a slope I had designed.  Told client, and me, it could not be done.

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Really?

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Found the pic I had taken in an Italian olive orchard, over a thousand years old, and emailed guy-in-a-truck.  With a note, 'do the drystack wall or I'll never use you again.'

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Because he had been an honest contractor at several jobsites, I continued to use him after this project, beautifully executed, as drawn.

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My bad.  He defaulted on money he owed his partner, and me.  Two clients, who did not know each other, called me on the same day, saying he was a misogynist, and they had paid him all his money and never wanted him back on their property.  

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Only tell you this little story as a heads-up if you are in the industry, and if you are hiring someone to help you in your landscape.  

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Hope the back story is as helpful as the landscape design picture.

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Let me know.  Oddly, I'm hesitant including it.

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

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Pic shot yesterday in client garden.

For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

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Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

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Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

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Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

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Construction by Award Winning

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.