As a designer or landscape architect your aim in planting design is to have your design realized in full, by reducing substitutions. You have visited your site and considered the various conditions, requirements and plant functions. You have consulted with your client and gone through your own extensive plant palette considerations. You have then undertaken research via various sources to confirm the plants you are scheduling will be suitable. There is always give or take across the project: pot/bag size versus client budget, site constraints (such as underground or overhead services), species suitability based on site conditions. Now you have taken into account a seemingly endless list of factors, you begin to design your planting plan and develop your plant schedule.
You finalize your construction documentation and issue for tender or quotes. From here you begin the delicate, and dreaded, process that is substitutions.
- Species x is not available, how about species y instead?
- I know you have scheduled for a 100 litre bag, but the biggest I can get is a 300mm pot, will that do?
- You have said you need 156 of species x across site, I can only find one grower who has 20 of them available at the moment. Can we sub the other 136 with species y?
Unfortunately the above statements are fairly common place across the industry. The blame tends to pass onto the landscape contractor, but more often than not they are merely dealing with the set of construction documentation that was provided to them.
At EvergreenConnect we see our role as invaluable across the whole greenlife industry, and all of the phases of design: from growing, to design, to procurement and installation.
If designers and landscape architects can just take a small amount of extra time during their scheduling to check the commercial availability of stock via EvergreenConnect, it can save a lot of back and forth negotiation with the landscape contractor on species and size substitutions and also saves the awkward conversation with the client when you have promised them a 500 litre bag and you can only find it in a 100 litre.
EvergreenConnect has several tools that can assist you with reducing substitutions:
- Just need to check the availability of that single species in a 200 litre bag? The Plant Search lets you check the availability species by species. You can even filter down to the state or region where you want to source from.
- Want to check your plant schedule in bulk? Simply use our Landscape Projects Tool which will give you live data as to the plant availability via our 700+ growers within Australia who list their stock via our website. If you are also working on procurement, you can simply convert this into a Quote Request and email it to your favourite suppliers
- For any designers and landscape architects or landscapers working in Vectorworks, the EvergreenConnect plugin lets your check plant availability live within your planting plan.
- As a production nursery, you can also receive quote requests immediately within your EvergreenConnect account via the Landscape Projects Tool, then quickly convert these into quotes via EvergreenConnect’s sales management functionality
Build efficiency and help in reducing substitutions across your projects by utilizing all EvergreenConnect has to offer.