Terms & conditions

Who you are dealing with

LushLandscapes.nz (“we”, “us”) provides garden design services throughout New Zealand, worked through online from the photos, plans and measurements you send us, along with a video call or a site visit where that makes sense.

These terms apply to every design package we take on. Where we send you a written quote or proposal, that document and these terms are read together. If the two ever disagree, the quote wins.

What you are buying

You are buying design — the thinking, the drawings and the plant list. Exactly what you receive depends on the package you choose, and the current contents of each package are set out on our services page.

Building the garden is a separate job, quoted and invoiced by whoever you choose to build it. We do not mark up build costs and we take no commission from suppliers or contractors, which is why our advice on materials and plants stays honest.

What we don't do

Some parts of a garden need a different profession, and we will say so rather than pretend otherwise. Unless we have agreed it in writing, our fee does not cover:

• Engineering or structural design, including retaining walls that carry load
• Drainage and stormwater design, or locating underground services
• Land surveying, boundary confirmation, or measured levels and contours
• Building consent or resource consent documentation, or dealing with council
• Project management, site supervision, or coordinating your contractors
• Arboricultural reports, geotechnical reports, or ecological assessments

Where your project needs any of these, we will tell you as early as we spot it so you can bring in the right person. We are happy to work alongside them.

Your drawings, and what they are for

Our plans are drawn to scale and are meant to be worked from. A planting plan with its schedule is exactly what your contractor or garden centre needs in order to price the job and put the right plants in the right places, and that is the point of it.

What they are not is engineering or council documentation. They do not certify that a structure will stand up, that water will go where it should, or that the work complies with the Building Act or your district plan. Anything structural, anything involving levels that matter, and anything needing consent must be checked and documented by a suitably qualified engineer, surveyor or consent planner before it is built.

Plants are living things. We choose them for your soil, your sun and your wind, and we choose carefully — but we cannot guarantee that any particular plant will thrive, and establishment depends on how the garden is planted, watered and looked after once we hand the drawings over.

What we need from you

The design is only as good as what it is based on, so you are responsible for giving us accurate information: photographs that show the space as it actually is, measurements or a baseplan if you have one, and anything you already know about boundaries, easements, covenants, services or consent conditions affecting the property.

We also use publicly available aerial imagery and council mapping — Canterbury Maps, Google Maps and the equivalents elsewhere in the country — to understand the shape and orientation of a property. That imagery is a useful starting point, but it is not a survey: boundaries shown on it are indicative only, and it can be several years out of date. Where a dimension really matters, we will ask you to measure it or recommend you have the site surveyed.

You also confirm that you own the property or have the owner's permission to have it designed, and that obtaining any approval the work needs — from council, a body corporate, a neighbour or anyone else — is your call to make.

Fees and payment

Our package prices are shown on the services page and include GST. A 50% deposit books your spot in the schedule, and the balance is due when we hand the drawings over.

Invoices are payable within 7 days. If an invoice goes unpaid past that, we may add a $50 administration fee and interest at 8% a year on the overdue amount, calculated daily until it is paid. We would far rather never use this clause — if money is tight, a quick email will always get you further than silence.

Work that falls outside the package you booked is quoted separately and only starts once you have said yes to it in writing — we will not run up extra hours and surprise you with them later.

Revisions

Each package includes one round of revisions, which is your chance to say what you want moved, changed or reconsidered once you have seen the design. Gather it into one go if you can — it makes for a better result than a trickle of separate changes.

Further rounds, or a change of direction that means starting a design again from scratch, are quoted separately before we begin.

Who owns the drawings

We keep copyright in everything we draw. Once your invoice is paid in full, you get an unlimited licence to use those drawings for the property they were designed for — build from them, hand them to your contractor, keep them for later, all fine.

What the licence does not cover is using the design for a different property, reselling it, or passing it to another designer to redraw as their own.

Photographs of your garden

We would love to photograph a garden we have designed, and we may ask. We will not publish photographs of your garden without your permission, and we never publish your street address. If you would rather your project stayed private, just say so — it changes nothing about the work and we will not ask twice.

If you have already given permission and later change your mind, email us and we will take the photographs down.

The photos and details you send us

We use what you upload to design your garden, and for nothing else. We do not sell it, and we do not pass it to anyone outside the project without asking you first.

Files you upload are stored on our website's server and moved into your project folder. If you would like your files and details deleted once the job is finished, email us and we will do it.

If something goes wrong

If we get something wrong, tell us — the first thing we will try to do is put it right, and most things are fixable at the drawing stage.

Beyond that, our liability for any claim connected with a project is limited to the fees you have paid us for that project. We are not responsible for the workmanship or pricing of contractors, for materials or plants supplied by others, or for advice given to you by a third party. Nothing in these terms limits any right you have under the Consumer Guarantees Act 1993 or the Fair Trading Act 1986 where those Acts apply to you.

Cancelling

You can stop a project at any time. Your deposit covers the work already done, so if we have barely started we will refund what is fair, and if the design is largely finished the deposit is likely to have been used up. We will tell you honestly where things stand and invoice only for work actually carried out.

Which law applies

New Zealand law, and the New Zealand courts.

Asking us something

Email hello@lushlandscapes.nz and a real person will answer. If a clause here worries you, raise it before you pay a deposit rather than after.