Landscaping is two businesses sharing a contact form.
One is recurring maintenance: a few hundred pounds a year, predictable, low-touch. The other is design and build: potentially tens of thousands, high-touch, and requiring a site visit before anyone can say anything useful.
The expensive mistake is spending an afternoon surveying a job that was never going to happen.
Sort them first
The very first thing to establish is which one this is. Everything afterwards differs.
Maintenance enquiries need: garden size, visit frequency, what is included, whether waste removal is extra, access.
Project enquiries need: plot size, access for machinery, slope, current state, existing structures, budget range, and timescale.
Asking maintenance questions of a project enquiry — or the reverse — produces an enquiry nobody can act on.
Budget, early enough to matter
For project work this is the question that decides whether a site visit is worth the drive. It is uncomfortable on the phone and much easier in chat, particularly when offered as ranges.
A design-and-build enquiry with a stated range is worth ten without one, because you know which afternoons to give away.
The seasonal problem
Landscaping demand arrives in a rush and books out. February and March generate more enquiries than you can survey, let alone deliver.
Two things help. Answering all of them at once, so the surge does not become a backlog. And being honest about lead time — telling someone in March that you are booking from June loses you the jobs you were never going to fit in anyway, which is a saving rather than a loss.
What the enquiry should contain
Rear garden, roughly 12m by 8m, in Sale. Currently lawn and an old patio. Side access, about a metre wide — no machine access. Wants a patio, raised beds and new fencing. Budget range £8–12k. Hoping for spring.
You can decide whether to attend that in ten seconds. That is the entire point.
Try it
Build one from your website and send it a vague "how much for a garden makeover" — see whether it asks the right things.
Related: the landscaping guide.