Unilock Comfort Step Technology

The bad days are few and far between, but they do happen in this business. When the heat is on at the height of summer, when equipment fails, a crew member calls in sick, or a delivery is late—particularly when those things happen all at once—that’s right about the time you forget about why you went into hardscaping. It’s those times you forget about the wonderfulness of working outdoors, of having your own crew, and of all the effort that went into building up your expertise and skills.

A meticulously hand-rendered landscape design plan is incomparable to anything else. The ability to draw every detail, from the smallest plant to the largest water feature, is a skill that creates functional works of art that, up until recently, drew customers. Today, however, landscape design has joined the rest of the design world: technology is king. As competition in the landscape industry becomes fiercer, owners are looking for anything that can help set them apart. 3D design is a great opportunity to do just that.

A major portion of the landscape construction business is selling the right products for the right projects. When it comes to pavers and retaining wall systems with higher square foot prices, however, some contractors shy away from pitching them for fear of scaring away the customer. Unilock products like EnduraColor Plus pavers, while costing more, are actually very sellable to homeowners when presented in the right way.

It’s been a few thousand years since the first roads were built, but there’s still no shortage of opinions about the right way to build them. For one reason or another, materials that have been good enough to get the job done for years come under scrutiny and are summarily deemed to be no longer acceptable. When it comes to building walkways or patios with interlocking concrete pavers, there’s one material commonly used for bedding that’s fallen out of favor (although not with everyone) in a big way: stone dust.