I’m the organizer and planner. I make lists. I check things off and love bullets. We had a list of things to look for when looking at land. We have a list of all of our ideas and when we’d like to implement them over the next 3 years. And, we have a Master Plan for the development of the 15 acres.
What does that mean – a Master Plan? Well, one thing we knew was we had a lot of ideas and we couldn’t put them in place all at once. So, they’d have to be rolled out year after year and who knows what could happen between those years? A small example is: what if you put a flower bed in one area with one type of rock and it was no longer available when you put in the next bed in the next year? Or what if you developed one area for a purpose and if you’d only thought about the next development, you would have known to move the first area over 4 feet. We wanted to make sure everything flowed together and made sense together. We wanted to have a reference point for all of our ideas – Hey, what about doing this – well, do we have space, will it fit with what we already have planned, when would we want to get to it, should it replace something else, and so on.
I also wanted a professionally laid out plan, so we researched and found a Landscape Architect firm. We worked with them to create a practical vision for all 15 acres and they gave us ideas and expertise. In this process, we defined our style for the business and now have a wall of taped-up ideas, magazine pages, and plans. We did have to invest in this master plan, but it’s already paid off and given us direction in the first 3 months on the land.
I wish I could explain in detail how important this has been, but we haven’t even gotten beyond the top of the iceberg of its’ potential value yet. I know in my gut it’s going to be a plan that pays off for a long time.
– Mary B.
