Most site work is specified by the people who profit from it.
The contractor writes the scope. The supplier recommends the product. The generic industry spec gets copied from the last job. And the property owner - the one paying for all of it, the one who lives with the result for the next twenty years - is the only party in the room without representation.
That's the gap Rooted Solutions Site Advisory fills. We work for the owner. Only the owner.
Drainage that keeps failing, grading that fights you, a landscape that never establishes, a property that floods where it shouldn't. We diagnose the actual cause - not the symptom the last contractor treated - and tell you what it will really take to fix it. For commercial and residential owners alike.
A real spec written for your property - your soil, your slope, your water, your goals - not the boilerplate that gets pasted onto every bid in the county. When you put work out to bid on a spec like this, every contractor prices the same scope, and you can finally compare apples to apples. It pays for itself in the bids alone.
Is your current landscape contract fair, and is your provider actually delivering what you're paying for? We review the agreement, the pricing, and the performance on the ground - and tell you straight where the value is and where it isn't. Often the first thing an owner needs isn't new work; it's an honest read on the work they're already buying.
Most contracts force every property into the same template - same visits, same scope, same line items - whether it fits or not. Your property isn't standard. We identify the service groups your site actually needs, cut what it doesn't, and help you stop paying for a package built for someone else's lawn.
A property is one of the largest assets most owners will ever steward. Yet the decisions that shape it for decades - how it drains, what goes in the ground, how the work is scoped and bid - are usually made by whoever showed up with a truck and a proposal.
There's nothing wrong with good contractors. Many are excellent. But even the best one is pricing their scope, protecting their margin, and moving to the next job. That's their role. It shouldn't be the only voice in the decision.
We bring the owner a second voice - one with 35 years in the field and the training to see the whole system, not just the piece being sold.
The urban planning background matters here. Reading a site the way a planner reads it - water, soil, use, long horizon - is a different skill than installing on it. Both matter. We bring the first so your contractor can do their best work on the second.
Ongoing oversight for property managers with multiple sites - a fractional landscape account manager on retainer, without adding headcount. We audit contracts, flag problems before they become complaints, score vendor performance, and act as the unbiased third party when something needs to be called out.
Month-to-month, no minimum. Includes contract and provider audit review, rotation-based site walks, a monthly vendor performance scorecard, unbiased third-party dispute mediation, and direct call/text/email access.
Month-to-month, no minimum. Same monthly scope as Standard, scaled for a larger portfolio.
Disputes between a property manager and a landscape contractor usually come down to one thing: there's no neutral party in the room who actually knows the work. The contractor defends their invoice. The owner suspects they're overpaying. Neither can prove it, so it festers.
We sit in that gap. Someone who has run the crews and read the contracts, with no stake in the outcome except the truth of it. Was the work performed to spec? Is the charge reasonable? Is the complaint fair? We give both sides an honest, informed read - and more often than not, that's what settles it.
Thirty-five years on the contractor's side of the table means we know exactly where the bodies are buried - and we'll tell you plainly, whichever way it falls.
Site Advisory is only worth paying for if the person doing the advising has seen enough ground to read it right. Here's the background behind the work:
That combination - decades in the field plus the planner's long view - is what lets us see the whole system instead of just the piece someone's trying to sell you.
Site advisory work often starts with a property and ends somewhere more personal. An owner carrying a difficult building, a stretched budget, and a hundred decisions is often carrying more than a property.
When the conversation turns that direction - and it sometimes does - there's somewhere to go with it.
Vine & Compass is our sister practice: faith-based life coaching for people who've built something demanding and lost themselves somewhere in the building. Rooted Solutions solves the property. Vine & Compass tends to the person carrying it. Two different kinds of help, same hands behind both - and we'll say plainly when the second one is what actually matters.
Commercial or residential, a drainage puzzle or a spec that needs writing - start with a conversation and a few photos.
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