Kitchens are table stakes

As the outdoor living market has become increasingly ascendant, more landscapers are getting into the design/build market or seeing growth in their own construction divisions. Maintenance is still the bread and butter for most landscapers, but the industry hangs its hat on projects like those in our cover story.

So when we started talking about design trends around the country, I gathered up a group of stellar designers and landscapers to see what they’re hearing about the types of projects and materials that are going to be popular this year.

Most of the design we talked about involved the incorporation of more technology into outdoor living elements – phone-controlled lighting and irrigation, for example. We discussed how kitchens are now table stakes. Customers expect the outdoor kitchen – what they want more of are televisions and the appliances and amenities to really be outside and entertain comfortably.

The Millenial generation came up, as it often will, as a disruptor to the traditional landscape aesthetic. How we want to live in the city, building smaller-scale or vertical gardens growing fruits and vegetables.

But what surprised me most was how little we talked about water. It’s a focus of mine (see nearly every issue of this magazine in the past three years). The subject came up, of course – half these guys are from Texas, Colorado and Oregon, so they know from droughts. But when I asked about it specifically, the main response I got was, “We got rain recently, so our clients stopped asking about it.”

Maintenance is still the bread and butter, but the industry hangs its hat on projects like those in our cover story.

And these are landscapers who take their environmental footprints seriously: Lambert’s has been all-organic for decades and Dennis’ 7 Dees has one of the most robust sustainable maintenance programs around. But it goes to show that customers don’t always want what’s best, or even what’s in the headlines.

All of these are true for the landscapers who talked about them, and none might fit your specific niche or market. But as we set off into 2016, take an opportunity to ask some questions of your clients. Survey your customers and see what they want. Now’s the time to give it to them. – Chuck Bowen