This sort of professional service is not expensive, although naturally fees vary with the reputation and experience of the individual landscape architect. For good inexpensive service, patronize the young men and women recently graduated from professional schools who are just getting started. Their fees, normally based on a per diem charge, plus travel expenses, are not high.

The matter of fees for professional service is not well un derstood. Most established landscape architects operate on a per diem basis. They have a set rate per hour for drafting time on plans and specifications, and another rate for trips to your garden. They do not sell anything but service. They will let contracts for construction or planting, or obtain plant material for their clients, but they do not, ordinarily, buy these things themselves and then resell to the client. In this way they differ from such professionals as interior decorators who collect a percentage on the price of the materials.

Landscape contractors and nurserymen who offer landscape service, make no special charge for professional advice, plans, or consultations. They "absorb" these services in the price they charge for the plants they sell from their nurseries or the commissions they receive on plants they purchase for resale. Sometimes people assume these professional services are given free. This is not the case. They are paid for, but their cost is concealed. Most large nurseries give competent advice because they employ trained landscape architects in their offices.

Many people hesitate to employ a professional because they fear that they will get in too deeply and be unable to extricate themselves from an expensive program. Doubtless such cases do occur, but the fault does not lie entirely with the landscape architect or nurseryman. He is, quite naturally, interested in doing a competent job or in selling as many plants as possible, as the case may be, but the client can easily control the situation by limiting the project at the start to certain areas and certain costs. Let him state frankly, at the beginning, what he is willing to spend, and the profes sional will respond by giving him the best solution possible within the limits set. Or if the appropriation is altogether in adequate, he will tell his client so.

Most successful plantings are done on a budget basis. Gen eral plans are made first. Then, section by section, the project is carried out, often over a period of years, so that costs never get out of hand. Finally the project is completed, as planned, and there have been no frustrating experiences of doing over parts that were first done without sufficient thought. Profes sional aid can thus be used throughout the whole program, without being burdensome at any time, and usually with real savings in the end.