Hi there, I just need to vent a little,

so I try to make a living from garden desingn and planting design (fully trained landscape architect), do this for a while and am really specialized by now, a complet and 120% plant geek (or nerd?)

I love that work, working with the owner, finding the right solution...

so this spring a lady rang me up, she had found me via a perennial planting I had designed for the city council and she had rang them up and asked for my contact.

that really tickled me pink.

In the first phone call her second question was like: do you have the capacitiy to do a design soon so I can plant this spring,

so, yes Ma`m, I am somewhat busy, but we will make that work, sounds really like a nice project

send her my hourly rate,

suggest working stepps, order of planning and stuff

ask about her garden

soil,

exposure

favourite color the whole sheebang

best, if I come and visit, we will take it from there

so I drive out there for an afternoon, alsmost three hours on site, sketching, asking her

seeing her large -and quite nice- garden

taking notes and photographs

she told me that her new bed should be a gravel- or sand bed,

told me on the phone, she had added 8 inches of sand on the new area and worked so hard.

I dig into the bed with my special spade, narrow and sharp, it hits solid soil after rather 3-5 inches than 8. Mention that planting in that soil will take effort

-she goes all: but we worked so hard, rotor tilled it etc

there is a freshly planted plum standard tree bang in the middle of her future perennial planting,

obviously not pruned properly

obviously a poor specimen with the main branches whorled, coming off from one spot at the trunk, I dont bother to ask about it, have a gut feeling ...

heavy name dropping on her side which nursery persons and legends she is on first name basis with....

there were some red flags, looking back now

badmouthing the local nature conservation departmenet, she has some beef with them as she built stuff where she should not have, but it is her right...

badmouthing some neighbor and her dog -horrible dog- while later her 2 pooches bark their head off behind a glass door whenever I move around

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will send me a plant list, she had kept jotting down plant names, on sticky notes, all over the places, just needs to put them all together, but right now she is sooo busy,

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points out that my email in the directory does not work, is wrong, I check it out, have it corrected, thank her profusly,

send a link to the new entry, noo, still does not work,

and she cant reply to my office email-adress (????) it does not work.

ask whether I have a website, well, yeaa, duh, (my email is like mail@nameofmybusiness)

I send her a mail with the current status:

description what design and color scheme I am aiming for

a few plant suggestions

next steps,

her required input

long story short, last week I sent her an invoice , informing her beforehand that I do so by email

now comes back a complaint that this is way too high, and not the norm for a "non commital, first meeting", and she knows because she asked other planting designers about it...

and she never recieved anything in writing (apart from some mails and a PDF she did not bother to download...)

what an entitled piece of work.

not sure what triggered her, perhaps I was not gushy enough, right now she is squabbeling about 3 hours of work on my invoice, I dont have high hopes...

it wont kill me, it just annoys me to no end that she did a 180 after much stalling instead of telling me of her changed mind much sooner...

you live and you learn, and "it smelled funny" from the first minute I stepped out of the car, I guess I was just so delighted by the prospect of a lovely planting in a lovely setting

and guess what she does for a living: snake oil saleswoman, I mean gloryfied brain juice massage, or Craniosakral therapy (like osteopathy)....

well, have a nice day everyone,

yours, Lin