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Sandy Springs Landscaping Co

FAQ

Landscaping questions, answered for this city

Cost, timing, permits, soil, plants and water. The answers here are specific to Sandy Springs rather than general, because the local half is where most of the surprises live.

Cost

What does a landscaping project cost in Sandy Springs?
It depends which scope you are buying, because these are different trades with different unit rates. Bed renovation and replanting commonly runs $14 to $30 per square foot. A properly built French drain is $40 to $85 per linear foot. Segmental block walls run about $40 to $110 per face square foot depending on height and reinforcement. Paver patios sit around $22 to $40 per square foot and natural stone higher. A whole back yard combining drainage, a wall, a patio and planting frequently lands between $29,000 and $55,000.
Why do two quotes for the same yard differ by half?
Almost always because of what is under the ground. The same pavers over two different base sections produce two very different prices and two very different lifespans, and the difference is invisible on the day the job finishes. The other big cause is access: a yard a machine can drive into and one where everything is barrowed down a slope are the same square footage and different money.
Is the quote free?
Yes, and there is nothing to sign. Someone walks the property, takes measurements, and sends back a scope with a price against it. The document is yours to keep, compare, or ignore.
What is usually excluded from a landscaping quote?
Permit fees unless stated, engineered wall drawings, arborist reports, survey work, variance applications where the project sits inside a stream buffer or the river corridor, and repair to irrigation lines cut by the work. Ongoing maintenance is almost always a separate arrangement.
Should I get several quotes?
Comparing is sensible, and it is only useful if the scopes match. Two prices for different base sections, different drainage provision or different plant sizes are not comparable numbers. Reading each one against the quantities and the buried detail matters more than counting how many you collected.

How a project runs

How long does a landscape project take?
A single bed is a couple of days. A full property design and install is two to three weeks of site time, and more if grading or wall work is in the scope. What stretches a programme is permitting: a land disturbance permit and a Tree Conservation Plan both add weeks before anyone starts, so they belong in the schedule from the beginning.
What happens at the site visit?
Roughly an hour on the property. Reading the slope and where water crosses it, checking the health and position of the existing trees, counting the light each area receives in leaf-on conditions, and looking at access, which is the largest single cost variable here. Then a written scope and a price follow.
Do I need to be there?
It helps for the first visit, because most of the useful information is in what you want and what you have already noticed. After that, no. A gate code and a phone number are usually enough.
When is the best time of year to book?
Earlier than most people do. Fall is the best planting season in Georgia and it is also the busiest booking period, so a project intended for October is a conversation worth having in August. Hardscape can be built through most of the year, and winter is often a good time for it because crews are less stretched.
Can the design be done in stages?
Yes, and on a larger property it usually should be. The useful approach is one plan drawn for the whole site, then phases built in the order that makes technical sense, which means water first, then grade, then hard surfaces, then planting. Phasing in a different order is how people end up trenching through a finished bed.

Permits and trees

Do I need a permit to landscape my own yard?
Often. Sandy Springs generally requires a land disturbance permit once 1,000 square feet or more of ground will be disturbed by grading, clearing, paving or grubbing, under Article 9 of the Development Code, and states that a permit may still be needed below that where the work requires erosion control measures or changes topography or stormwater drainage patterns.
What does a land disturbance permit cost?
The city publishes the figures. A residential project carries a $25 administrative fee, a $50 certificate fee, a $100 review fee and a land disturbance fee of $200 per lot, plus a technology fee that varies with the permit cost.
When do I need a tree removal permit?
For any tree measuring 18 inches diameter at breast height or larger, for any dogwood or redbud at 10 inches or larger, and for any tree inside a stream buffer or the Chattahoochee River Corridor at any size. A permit is also required where a mix of healthy and dead, dying, diseased or hazardous trees is coming out together.
What if the tree is dead or dangerous?
There is a documented route for that. The city asks for documentation to be sent to the City Arborist for approval before removal: a description of the tree, the property address, a description of the issue, and photographs of the condition. A certified arborist can be consulted for the evaluation.
What is a Tree Conservation Plan and when does it apply?
Where tree removal is associated with construction activity, and the city names grading, pool installation, patios and additions specifically, the submittal is a Tree Conservation Plan rather than a Tree Removal Permit. It must comply with the Tree Conservation Ordinance at Division 9.3 of the Development Code and be submitted with the construction documents before any tree removal or impact occurs.
How is diameter at breast height measured?
Measure the trunk circumference at 4.5 feet above ground level and divide by 3.14. On sloping ground, which is most of Sandy Springs, the 4.5 feet is measured from the highest point of ground at the base of the tree rather than from the downhill side.

The ground

Is Georgia red clay bad for a landscape?
It is misunderstood rather than bad. The reference soil here is the Cecil series, classified in the USDA description as kaolinitic and rated low for shrink-swell, so it does not swell or heave the way expansive clays elsewhere do. What it does is refuse water at rate: the Metro North Georgia Water Planning District puts practical absorption at about half an inch of water per hour, and Atlanta storms deliver more than that.
Why does water stand in my yard?
Because it arrived faster than the ground could take it and then had nowhere to go. The useful diagnostic is time. Water gone within a day is surface runoff and wants grading and conveyance. Ground that stays soft for several days is saturated and wants subsurface interception, which is a different fix at a different price.
Should I dig a big hole and fill it with good soil?
No, and this is the most common planting mistake on clay. A hole filled with bagged mix inside a clay surround behaves like a container: water collects in it and the root ball sits in the water. Prepare the whole bed broadly and shallowly instead, cut planting holes wider than deep, and set the root ball slightly proud of grade with the flare visible.
My yard is bare orange clay after building work. What now?
That is compaction rather than bad soil. Construction traffic collapses the thin sandy loam surface layer that makes this ground plantable, leaving subsoil at the surface with the pore structure crushed out. Relieving the compaction and rebuilding structure comes before buying a single plant, and it determines whether anything planted afterwards works.
Is a soil test worth doing?
Yes, and it is the cheapest information available about a property. The number worth watching on Piedmont soil is pH, which tends acidic here. That suits a large part of the woodland palette and works against a lawn, and adjusting it is slow enough to be worth starting before planting rather than after.

Plants and lawn

Will grass grow under my trees?
Only within a narrow range. UGA Extension puts the practical floor for turfgrass at around four hours of full to filtered sun a day, rates zoysiagrass very good to good for shade and describes it as the best warm-season grass to grow beneath mature trees, holding acceptable quality down to about four to four and a half hours of filtered light. Common bermudagrass rates very poor. Below four hours, a bed is the honest answer.
Zoysia, bermuda or fescue?
Light and winter colour decide it. Bermuda belongs in open sun and has the best wear recovery. Zoysiagrass is the most flexible on a wooded lot, with very good to good shade tolerance and excellent sun tolerance, at the cost of slow establishment. Tall fescue is the only one that stays green through a Georgia winter and is well adapted to the Piedmont, but it is a cool-season grass carrying an Atlanta August.
When should trees and shrubs go in?
Fall, for almost everything woody. UGA Extension describes fall as the ideal time to plant most woody trees, shrubs, vines and groundcovers as well as herbaceous perennials in Georgia, because temperatures are moderate, irrigation demand is lower, and roots keep developing after the tops go dormant. October through early December is the centre of the window here.
Can I add topsoil under a big tree to make a bed?
That is the classic way to lose the tree. Raising grade over a root zone cuts oxygen to the roots and buries the root flare, and the decline is slow enough that nobody connects cause to effect years later. Woodland beds get planted into the existing soil between the surface roots, with small stock and light mulch.
What should I do about English ivy?
Take it off the trees and out of the beds. The City of Sandy Springs describes English ivy as an invasive non-native species that can displace native plants and threaten tree health, and notes that property owners are responsible for the health and maintenance of trees on their property. Ivy up a trunk also adds weight and sail area to a canopy that has to survive summer storms.

Water and irrigation

When am I allowed to run my sprinklers?
Between 4 p.m. and 10 a.m., daily. That schedule sits in Georgia law at O.C.G.A. 12-5-7, added by the Water Stewardship Act of 2010, and covers irrigating ground cover, trees, shrubs and other plants. Drip irrigation, soaker hoses, hand watering with an automatic cutoff or handheld container, personal food gardens and private wells carry no time limitation.
What about watering a brand new landscape?
The statute exempts irrigation of new and replanted plant, seed or turf during installation and for 30 days immediately following the date of installation. That is the establishment window, and it exists so a new install is not being watered against the clock.
Can my landscaper connect the sprinklers to the water supply?
Not the connection itself. Georgia law allows the plumbing component of a lawn sprinkler system to be installed, altered or repaired from a backflow preventer that was installed by a licensed plumber, which leaves the potable connection and the backflow device to a plumber and everything downstream to the irrigation installer. Sandy Springs requires a plumbing permit for plumbing work.
Can I discharge a drain into the creek at the back of my property?
Check the map first. Sandy Springs protects designated streams with a 75-foot buffer, of which the inner 50 feet must remain undisturbed and the outer 25 feet is an impervious setback, and construction inside those areas generally requires an approved variance. The city publishes a Community Development Map with a stream buffer layer showing whether either applies to an address.

Still unanswered

The guides go further on every subject on this page, and the glossary covers the vocabulary that turns up on a quote. If the question is about your own property, call (404) 737-3568 or use the quote form.

Find out what the yard would cost

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