How a landscape design app improved results for a landscape designer

Overview 

Keith is a landscape designer at Bergman Nurseries that reduced the amount of time he spent designing plot plans by over 10 hours a week using a landscape design app called ArcSite.

During peak seasons, Keith designs 15 plot plans a week—two to three a day— for residential landscaping projects. He receives at least four or five calls a day from clients. “If you could see the files on my desk… I make a lot of calls every day,” said Keith.

Company Profile

Bergman Nurseries is a full-service landscape and irrigation contractor as well as an independent garden center. The main strength of the firm lies in their landscape design and irrigation expertise. Bergman Nurseries had never used a landscape design app before and instead focused on the manual process with a customer first mindset and made every attempt to meet the needs of our customers, no matter what the size of the project.

Designing it the Traditional Way

Prior to ArcSite, Keith would spend a lot of time drawing up plot plans. When visiting a client’s home for a project, he would take measurements of the house, and draw up a layout and edge in the property’s features on a big sheet of paper, typically a 24 by 36. He would have to spend an hour manually without the use of any landscape design app by inputting, scanning and pasting that information into a design software on his office computer.

Keith knew there had to be an app out there that could streamline his design process, so he searched the App Store. He needed an app that was compatible with his design software. He eventually stumbled upon ArcSite and downloaded it on his iPad Pro.

Keith’s Modern Approach

Using ArcSite Keith was able to spend less time on the design process. Now when he walks around the client’s house, he clicks on the corresponding symbol in the landscape design app library and adjusts it to the size he needs it in, and he then traces out the basic layout of the house and edges in property features. “I can sit there and basically do the design while I sit there in their yard,” Keith said. “I don’t use pencil and paper anymore.”

“I can sit there and basically do the design while I sit there in their yard,” Keith said. “I don’t use pencil and paper anymore.”

He emails the design to an assistant at his office. The assistant imports it into the office’s design software. “By the time I get back, she’s got it done on our design software on the computer, and we’re ready to roll,” Keith said. And if a client wants just a quick design and no installations, Keith can just export the design to the client as a PDF.

He could also import plot plans from other architects into ArcSite. He doesn’t have to go a site carrying big sheets of plans; he just opens up the architects’ plans on ArcSite. “I can scale it and then pull off measurements and everything off of those off of those designs from ArcSite that I’ve uploaded to [the ArcSite] cloud,” said Keith.

Key Takeaways

ArcSite has saved Keith over 10 hours a week on his designs and an hour on each design. “ArcSite has cut my time down on my designs,” Keith said.

Seeing that Keith saves time thanks to ArcSite’s advanced landscape design app interface, his boss bought his own iPad Pro and downloaded ArcSite on it. Keith said, “I think he sees it as a savings opportunity.” Keith hopes to get him up to speed on how to use ArcSite soon, so the firm can save even more time on projects.