It has been a pleasure working with you on soil consulting issues for the past few years. You have helped our projects and our practice of landscape architecture in a number of ways.

     After asking ourselves how we could improve plant selection, soil conditions, and bid accuracy, and avoid change orders and other construction issues, we decided to improve our approach to soil specification and plant selection. We decided to start obtaining soil information before we began any planting design or contract documentation. By asking you to take soil samples, obtain soil analyses, interpret existing soil conditions, and recommend specific soil amendments, we have improved our practice of landscape architecture and project execution as follows:

• Better plant selection, with plant selection based more closely on specific plant species' soil requirements and matching them as closely as possible to existing or amended soil conditions.



• Improved soil specifications that include specific requirements for both methods and quantities for soil amendments, subsurface drainage, import soils, etc.



• More accurate bids, and possibly lower bids, that require no guesswork, allowances, or contingencies because the requirements for soil amendments, subsurface drainage, import soils, etc., are clear to all parties.



• Tighter bid range, due to landscape contractors all bidding on the same specifications.



• Fewer change orders or construction phase discussions regarding responsibility for soil amendments, due to initial clarity in the specifications included in the contract documents.



• Better long-term plant growth and survival which is, after all, the common goal of the owner, the landscape contractor, and the landscape architect.

     ...We will continue to rely on your ability to analyze sites, soils, and drainage, and make recommendations for mitigation of adverse soil conditions, and help us and the Owner understand how these adverse situations resulted, but it is your ability to help us avoid these situations, which result only in cost, delay, and poor plant growth, which is far more important, and which is why your services are so important to our practice.

     We are very pleased with the services that you provide, and look forward to working with you for years to come. I would be happy to act as a reference should your potential clients or my fellow landscape architects wish to call.

Ted Wolff, ASLA, Principal
Wolff Clements and Associates, Ltd.
December 10, 2003