Again, a lot of these things are a reaction to economics and some by availability. Some are a reflection of values at the time. Used ties were a very cheap construction material that allowed people to manipulate grades in big ways at comparatively low costs. This is what is now going on with modular block walls. Bark mulch was a byproduct of the timber industry and got to be useful re-use of a waste product (it used to be very cheap 50 years ago). It eventually became a commodity on its own. Now other waste products (old fences, pallets, and some demo material) are ground up to supplement or replace bark mulch. It is helped along by the values of the time which include the notion that recycling a waste product is "the right thing to do". It always helps when these materials are making somebody some money as well. Recycled tires are definitely more embraced by eco-superheroes than by high end consumers. This is a head scratcher to me when I visit a town owned park that has this under a swing set adjacent to a salt marsh. The stuff is kicked around everywhere, looks bad, and smells. I don't know how you can clean it up without removing an equal volume of soil effectively doubling the volume of waste. I don't get the idea of why dumping it here is better than dumping it somewhere else. But, some people felt they were saving the world doing this. I'm sure they will blame "industry" for misleading them. Availability also affects fads when something that was not widely availably becomes widely available and people react to the novelty of it. Red lava rock in the eighties, bright colored dyed mulch, strong colored concrete pavers, granite cobbles from India, ornamental grasses, ... These existed for quite a while before they became widely available. When they did become available a lot of people rushed be on the cutting edge of doing "new things". Novelty goes a long way, too. I'm fascinated by the way western cities and the people in them find so much beauty in colored concrete pavers and modular blocks while here in the Northeast they are viewed as extremely cheesy and tacky. Even multi-million dollar homes out there are fully dressed out with it. What is embraced here is possibly old and passe there.

I will point out to everyone that the designer in question would not have these rates for very long if there were not those who felt she is worth it. Is the price too steep? It depends on your needs and whether the consultant has something equal to that value or not. I think I know who the designer is and if I'm correct, this person is a specialist in period design. I was involved in a publicly owned historic renovation project a couple of years ago as the site designer. I told the board that was running it to look for such a person because I did not want to touch the landscape design with a ten foot pole. I'm not saying that I could not do the research and get up to speed with historically accurate, but there is more to it than that. I did the Site Plan and all the politics involved in getting approval for a large parking lot and some large retaining walls that were necessary yet very scary to those who use the historic campus this was on. I was in the best position to get that phase done which allowed for a fresh face and new specialized set of credentials to get through the planting design without the added baggage of the site plan battles. These projects are run by committees and subcommittes. It is the politics of design where specialty credentials is highly important as a position of strength in order to bring all the competing agendas and values together. You also have to have the knowledge, skills, and abilities to control that process and get the job done along with those credentials. Not many people fit that specialized description. When someone does, and this person did, he or she is worth the pay rate. Now many might say that "I don't need the politacal power, so I should not be charged for it". They would be correct, but the designer can't displace her full billing rate with low billing rates just because someone only needs a portion of her value. She knows most people are not going to need her full capacity and are not willing to pay for it. But, she wants both the challenge and rewards of working at that full capacity and the enjoyment of working for people who value that as much as she does. The end result is only the people who really value what she does will get involved with her. She'll have a greater quality of life doing challenging specialized work and making a better living at it. That is not bad for anyone.

My husband is from Sweden and I lived there for a short while, and have spent several months visiting. We try to go back every other year (his family here one year, us there the next). We'll be married 15 years this year, and in all those trips I've probably only brought back a small bag of things for the house (and a lot of them came from an Indian style store chain they have there, they aren't even Swedish!) Where his family lives (right around the middle of the country) bright white walls are fairly common, with their natural pine floors, or this really hard manmade surface that's comparable to formica -- and super sturdy/thick wood blinds for blocking that midnight sun, of course! The airy blue mentioned above is fairly common too. All quite utilitarian. From your descriptions I can completely picture a thick cream color. I have an old picture from PB somewhere that was my inspiration pic for my great room until I went a completely different direction, but the pic always "felt" so happy and warm to me. Think great creamy walls, white secondaries, and orange pops. Not garish orange, more like a mica lamp, and an apothecary jar full of dried orange slices. Mixture of wicker, wood and iron furniture. I'll post the pic if I can find it when I get home.

That ranks up there with the concern that heat reflective window will cause your neighbors vinyl siding to warp and possibly melt.