On most landscaping services in Island Lake, IL, three jobs get handed between companies. A designer draws, a contractor builds, and somebody else turns up to mow it.
Each handover is a point where intent leaks out, and the leak usually shows up two or three years later, when the planting has been pruned into shapes the design did not anticipate.
ILT Vignocchi has been family-owned and independent since 1969, and we kept design, construction and care under one roof for accountability more than efficiency.
Our in-house design team models every project in 2D and 3D, and the crews who build the work and then care for it sit alongside them, so a question about how a bed will be pruned in year five gets answered while the plan is still on a screen.
Related: What 55 Years in Business Teaches a Landscaping Company About What Actually Lasts
What Gets Lost Between a Landscape Drawing and an Installation?
The reasoning behind the drawing is what gets lost. A plan shows a shrub at a particular distance off a walk because of what it will be at maturity, not because of what it is in the pot.
A crew that did not sit in the design conversation plants to the drawing and spaces to the plant, which is a small difference that resolves badly in year four.
When the people installing the work heard why each spacing was chosen, the planting grows into the design instead of out of it.
Why Does Landscape Maintenance Belong in the Design Conversation?
Maintenance belongs in the design conversation because every design is a promise about future work. A bed of plants that want annual renewal pruning will drift if nobody renews them, and a design that asks for care nobody planned to give fades within a few seasons.
Our landscape maintenance crews are horticulturally trained and led by long-tenured team members.
When they are going to inherit a planting, they say so while it is still a drawing rather than afterward, and the design adjusts before anything goes in the ground.
What Does Crew Continuity Change on a Landscaped Property?
Crew continuity changes what gets noticed. Consistent crews with real tenure, rather than a rotation of strangers, mean the people walking a property in May remember what it looked like last October.
A hedge thinning on one side, a bed edge creeping or a tree limb developing over a walk is obvious to somebody who has been there twenty times and invisible to somebody on a first visit. Familiar crews catch those changes while the fix is still small.
Related: Roots of a Great Landscape: What Thoughtful Planting Does for Island Lake Properties
How Should a Homeowner Judge a Landscape Company?
A homeowner should judge a landscape company by what it asks before it proposes anything.
A company that walks a property and talks about how the family uses the back of the house, where afternoon sun lands and what the drainage does in a heavy spring rain is designing.
A company that leads with a product list is selling. The difference is audible in the first twenty minutes, and it predicts how the company will handle the decisions that come up after the contract is signed.
Where Does a Landscape Design Project Usually Begin?
A landscape design project usually begins with one problem the owner can name. A patio too small for the way the family actually entertains, a slope nothing will grow on or an entrance that no longer matches the house is a common starting point.
The design conversation widens from there. On most estate properties the finished plan takes in more than the original complaint, phased across a few seasons rather than built in one.
Begin Your Landscaping Services With a Walk Around the Property
The most useful first meeting is an hour outside, with the people who will actually design, build and look after the place.
ILT Vignocchi works across Island Lake, Barrington, Long Grove, Lincolnshire, Lake Forest and the wider Chicagoland and Lake Geneva area, and the same family has run the company since its founding.
Schedule your landscape design consultation with ILT Vignocchi and walk the property with our team.
In Summary
Can ILT Vignocchi take over maintenance of a landscape another company built?
ILT Vignocchi takes over landscapes other companies built, and it is a good share of what we do. The first season is spent learning the property, which plants are where and what the previous program was doing, before anything about it gets changed.
How far ahead should a landscape design conversation start?
For work you want built next season, the fall before is comfortable. Design, revisions and material sourcing all happen off-season, and the properties that get built early in a year are the ones designed in the one before it.
Does a large landscape project have to happen in one go?
Most estate properties around Island Lake are phased rather than built at once. The structural work and the drainage go in first, and the planting and finishing layers are added in later seasons as the plan allows.
Related: How Landscape Planting Services Create the Living Layer That Gives a Property Its Character
