The full professional workflow, end to end

The map of the entire course: eleven phases from the first phone call to the tenth year of maintenance. Learn the sequence now and every later lesson has somewhere to sit.

⏱ 25 minFoundation🔗 8 resources (8 free)

A good landscaper’s real advantage is not that they lay a straighter paver than you. It is that they do things in an order that never requires undoing. Every expensive disaster in this trade is a sequence error wearing a different costume: the conduit that was not laid before the paving, the retaining wall built before anyone rang the council, the plants bought before the soil budget existed.

This course is eleven phases long. That is not filing. The order is the content. Read it once now for the shape, and come back whenever you are unsure what you should be doing next.

The eleven phases

#	Phase	What you finish holding	What it stops you doing
1	The trade and the process	A map, and a definition of “finished”	Wandering
2	First contact and the brief	A written brief with a real budget number	Designing something you cannot afford
3	Site analysis	A measured base plan and a constraints plan	Designing on a site you have not read
4	Rules, permits and approvals	A written list of every approval you need	Falling in love with something illegal
5	Concept design	A concept plan answering the brief	Building a collection of features
6	Documentation	Drawings you can build and price from	Guessing on site, at 20 times the cost
7	Costing, quoting and contract	A staged, costed plan you can afford	Running out of money at 70 per cent
8	Build	The garden	Digging it up twice
9	Handover and records	As-builts, manual, warranties	Forgetting where the mainline runs
10	Maintenance and establishment	A calendar and a working retic	Watching the first summer kill it
11	Value and review	An honest review against the brief	Repeating the same mistake

Notice where the drawing happens. Phase 5 of eleven. Four phases of unglamorous work come first, and they are the cheap ones.

Why the order is what it is

Site analysis before concept design

A concept plan is a set of promises about a piece of ground. If you have not measured the levels, dug a hole, tracked the afternoon sun and found the services, every promise is a guess.

The Perth version: you draw a sunken fire pit, then hit cemented limestone at 400 mm and a rock breaker hire. You draw screening trees on the northern boundary, then find the sewer runs there. You draw a lawn where the site falls toward the house. None of these are design problems. They are information problems, and information is cheapest before the design. That is what the constraints and opportunities plan exists to force.

Approvals before design commitment

Approvals sit at Phase 4, between analysis and design, for one reason: a constraint you learn about late is a redesign, and a constraint you learn about after construction is a demolition.

WA’s rules bite in a suburban back garden. Retaining walls trigger permits at low heights. Anything near a pool fence has its own regime. And registration and permits are two separate questions people constantly merge: from 1 July 2026, Class 10a buildings under $50,000 — patios, pergolas, carports, sheds — no longer need a registered building contractor, but the building permit requirement is unchanged. Above all of it sits the planning layer, the R-Codes, currently the April 2026 edition, in force since 10 April 2026.

Spend an afternoon in Phase 4 finding out what you may build, then design inside that envelope. Start with R-Codes and your council and retaining walls approval.

Documentation before costing

You cannot price a picture. Quantities come off dimensioned drawings, which is why Phase 6 sits before Phase 7 and why quantity take-offs is the first costing lesson rather than the last. A concept plan will get you within about 40 per cent, which is another way of saying it will get you nowhere.

Irrigation before soil and plants

Inside Phase 8 the order is: services, levels, drainage, structure, hard surfaces, then irrigation, then soil, then plants, then mulch.

Irrigation goes in before soil and plants because trenching a mainline through finished beds destroys the soil profile you just paid for, and because plants must be watered from the day they go in. Just as importantly, anything crossing under a future path or lawn — conduit, sleeve, lighting cable — must be laid before that base is compacted. Cutting a trench through new liquid limestone for a lateral you forgot is a scar you own forever.

Soil goes on top of a working system, and plants go in last because they are the only thing on site that dies if it waits. Follow this through irrigation hydraulics and turning Perth sand into soil.

The other Perth-specific timing constraint is the sprinkler roster. Sprinklers are banned from 1 June to 31 August across Perth, Mandurah and parts of the South West and Great Southern, bore water included, and a new lawn or garden only gets an exemption of up to 42 days (1 October to 31 March) or 35 days (1 April to 30 September) from the day of planting. Plant your lawn in May with no exemption and you are legally unable to water it. See bores, roster and the winter ban.

Before you start: the parts that are not optional

Three things on a landscaping site can kill or permanently injure you, and none of them care that it is your own house.

Buried services. Lodge a free Before You Dig Australia enquiry before any excavation, then hand-dig near anything marked. Underground power on a Perth verge does not give you a second chance.
Silica dust. Cutting pavers, brick, concrete or limestone releases respirable crystalline silica. Cut wet or with on-tool extraction, always, and wear a fitted respirator. Silicosis is irreversible.
Electrical work. All electrical work in WA must be done by a licence holder, and it is illegal for an unlicensed person to carry out electrical work including modifications to fixed wiring. That covers mains-voltage garden lighting, pond pumps and a power point in a shed. You may lay the conduit; a licensed electrical contractor connects it and issues the certificate.

Trench collapse, working alone in 40-degree heat, tree work at height and asbestos in pre-1990 sheds and fencing get their own treatment in site establishment and safety.

What a professional does at this stage

A professional sells the sequence, not the shovel. Each phase produces an output the next phase consumes, and they will not start a phase whose input is missing — which is why a decent designer declines to draw until they have levels, and a decent builder declines to start until the approvals are in hand.

The reason is cost of change. A decision changed on paper in Phase 5 costs an afternoon. Changed in Phase 6 it costs a redraw and a re-price. In Phase 8 it costs demolition, disposal, rework and a delay to every trade behind it. Roughly an order of magnitude per phase — which is the whole argument for front-loading the boring work.

They also write the output of each phase down. You are running one job, which feels like an argument for keeping it in your head. It is not: renovations run for months, and October-you will not remember what March-you decided.

The three phases where projects most often go wrong

Phase 4, approvals. Skipped or assumed. A retaining wall or patio built without the permit it needed is not a paperwork problem — councils can require it to come out, and it is discoverable at sale. Cheapest phase to do properly, most expensive to skip.

Phase 7, costing and staging. The classic Perth half-finished back garden: paving and a pergola done, then nothing for three years because the money ran out before soil, retic and plants. Costing is not optimism with a calculator, and staging means each stage has to be a usable, finished thing on its own.

Phase 8, build. Sequence errors, and they are unforgiving. No sleeves under the paving. Soil in before the retic. Turf laid in May with no exemption. Each one is cheap to avoid and expensive to fix.

Renovating changes the emphasis, not the order

An existing garden adds one heavy job to Phase 3 — the existing garden audit — and one real budget line to Phase 8, because demolition and disposal cost money and tip fees are charged by the tonne. It also gives you an advantage: you already know how the block behaves in February, where water pools, and which corner nobody uses. That is site analysis you did by living there.

The next lesson deals with the awkward part of this course: you are the client and the contractor at once, which means you get to approve your own scope creep. It sets up the discipline that makes the rest of the sequence hold.

Checklist

Recite the eleven phases in order without looking
Explain why site analysis comes before concept design
Explain why irrigation goes in before soil and plants
Identify the three phases where projects most often go wrong

Where to go deeper

Every link below was fetched and checked before it shipped. Nothing here is a guess.

Freegovernment20 minPerth / WA
Building or renovating your home
Building and Energy, Department of Energy, Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety
Why this oneThe single page that tells you where the legal lines sit between doing it yourself, hiring a tradesperson and needing a registered building contractor. It carries the change that took effect on 1 July 2026 — Class 10a buildings valued under $50,000 no longer need a registered building contractor, which covers most patios, pergolas, carports and sheds — while confirming that building permit requirements for those structures still apply. It also gives the contract rules you will need in Phase 7: home indemnity insurance above $20,000, and a maximum deposit of 6.5 per cent of the contract price.
Change this for Perth
Registration and permits are two separate questions and this page is mostly about the first. Whether your specific structure needs a building permit is decided by your local government, so confirm it with them before you commit to a design.
Link checked 2 Aug 2026
Freegovernment15 minPerth / WA
Building approvals: permits, forms and the Building Services Levy
Building and Energy, Department of Energy, Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety
Why this oneThe regulator's hub for the actual paperwork — the BA forms, the Building Services Levy, the fee schedule and the Class 1 to Class 10 building classifications that decide which rules apply to your structure. Useful precisely because it is honest about its limits: it repeatedly tells you to contact your local government for requirements and local laws, which is the correct answer and the one most blogs get wrong by quoting a threshold from a different council.
Link checked 2 Aug 2026
Freegovernmentreference documentPerth / WA
Residential Design Codes Volume 1
Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage
Why this oneThe planning layer that sits above building permits and quietly governs a lot of what you can put in a back garden — setbacks, boundary walls, site cover, open space and outdoor living areas. Read it as a reference rather than cover to cover. Note the version: the current Volume 1 is the April 2026 edition, which came into effect on 10 April 2026, so any advice or PDF you find referencing an earlier version may be out of date.
Change this for Perth
Local governments administer the R-Codes and many have local planning policies that vary them. The document tells you what questions to ask; your council tells you the answer for your lot.
Link checked 2 Aug 2026
Freetool10 min to lodgeAustralian
Before You Dig Australia: for homeowners
Before You Dig Australia
Why this oneThe free national enquiry service that returns utility plans for your address, and the page that says plainly that fencing, driveways, landscaping and pools are exactly the jobs it is for. It also makes the point most homeowners miss — the pipes and cables you can hit are often just outside your boundary, under the verge, the driveway crossover and along fence lines. Lodging costs nothing and takes about ten minutes, which makes skipping it indefensible.
Change this for Perth
The plans show what the asset owners have recorded. They are not a substitute for hand-digging or a cable locator near a marked service, and they will not show private runs installed by a previous owner — old power to a shed, a bore line, an abandoned soakwell.
Link checked 2 Aug 2026
Freegovernment5 minPerth / WA
Winter Sprinkler Switch-off
Water Corporation
Why this oneA three-month hole in the calendar that reshapes the whole build programme, and the reason a Perth project plan is not the same as a Sydney one. Sprinklers cannot be used in Perth, Mandurah and parts of the South West and Great Southern between 1 June and 31 August, the ban applies to bore water as well as scheme water, and the residential fine is $100. Read it before you decide when to plant, not after.
Link checked 2 Aug 2026
Freegovernment10 minPerth / WA
Apply for a watering exemption
Water Corporation
Why this oneThe mechanism that lets a new garden be established outside the normal roster, and a hard scheduling constraint dressed up as an application form. The exemption runs up to 42 days from the day of planting between 1 October and 31 March, and up to 35 days between 1 April and 30 September, then stops dead. It also states the line that should end every argument with a contractor: breaches are the responsibility of the property owner, not the person who installed the lawn, plants or sprinkler system.
Change this for Perth
The exemption starts on the day the lawn or garden goes in, not the day you apply, so a late application just shortens it. Random inspections occur and breaching the conditions risks a $500 fine.
Link checked 2 Aug 2026
Freegovernment25 minPerth / WA
Managing crystalline silica dust in the workplace
WorkSafe WA
Why this oneThe regulator's guidance on the hazard that hurts more Australian landscapers than anything else on site, and it names our work explicitly: cutting and laying pavers and surfacing, brick, concrete or stone cutting, and angle grinding, jack hammering and chiselling of concrete or masonry. It sets out the risk assessment, the control hierarchy and the requirement for a silica risk control plan for high-risk processing. Read it in Phase 1, not on the morning you hire a brick saw.
Change this for Perth
These are work health and safety duties on a person conducting a business or undertaking. Cutting pavers on your own block does not make you a PCBU, but the dust is identical and silicosis is irreversible — use the same water suppression, on-tool extraction and respiratory protection the guidance describes.
Link checked 2 Aug 2026
FreedirectoryPerth / WA
Josh's House
Josh Byrne & Associates / Curtin University
Why this oneA fully documented Perth project run end to end by a landscape architect who is also an environmental scientist and Gardening Australia's WA presenter. Free factsheets, architectural plans, a video library covering the build process and a live data portal — which makes it the closest thing available to watching the whole workflow executed properly on a Fremantle block. Worth bookmarking now and returning to at each phase.
Change this for Perth
The project spans housing, energy and water-sensitive design as well as landscape. Take the landscape, water and soil material; the building fabric content is background.
Link checked 2 Aug 2026

The rules, with sources

WA regulation changes. Each point below names its primary source and the date it was last checked — always confirm with your own council before you build.

From 1 July 2026, the construction of Class 10a buildings valued at less than $50,000 does not need to be carried out by a registered building contractor in WA. Class 10a covers non-habitable buildings such as a private garage, carport, shed or the like. Building permit requirements for Class 10a buildings still apply. Most other building work valued at $20,000 or more and requiring a building permit must still be carried out by a registered builder.
Building and Energy, Department of Energy, Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety ↗ · checked 2 Aug 2026
Home indemnity insurance is required for all building work requiring a building permit and valued at more than $20,000, and can cover loss of a deposit up to $40,000 and incomplete or defective building work up to $200,000. The maximum deposit a builder or tradesperson can require before starting work is 6.5 per cent of the contract price.
Building and Energy, Department of Energy, Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety ↗ · checked 2 Aug 2026
All electrical work in WA must be carried out by a person who holds the relevant electrical licence, and it is illegal for an unlicensed person to carry out electrical work, including modifications to fixed wiring. An electrical safety certificate must be provided within 28 days for electrical work other than maintenance and like-for-like replacement.
Building and Energy, Department of Energy, Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety ↗ · checked 2 Aug 2026
Sprinklers must not be used in Perth, Mandurah and parts of the South West and Great Southern between 1 June and 31 August each year. The switch-off applies to bore water users as well as scheme water users, and the residential fine is $100.
Water Corporation ↗ · checked 2 Aug 2026
A watering exemption for a new lawn or garden runs for up to 42 days from the day of planting between 1 October and 31 March, and up to 35 days from the day of planting between 1 April and 30 September. Random inspections may occur and failure to comply with the exemption conditions risks a $500 fine. Breaches are the responsibility of the property owner, not the person who installed the lawn, plants or sprinkler system.
Water Corporation ↗ · checked 2 Aug 2026
Cutting and laying pavers and surfacing, brick, concrete or stone cutting, and angle grinding, jack hammering or chiselling concrete or masonry are crystalline silica processing under WA work health and safety law. Control measures must be implemented regardless of whether the processing is high risk, and a silica risk control plan is required for high-risk crystalline silica processing.
WorkSafe WA ↗ · checked 2 Aug 2026
The current Residential Design Codes Volume 1 is the April 2026 edition, which came into effect on 10 April 2026. The R-Codes set the planning and design provisions for residential development in WA and are administered by local governments.
Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage ↗ · checked 2 Aug 2026