You may want to contact APLD for a member list. Word of mouth referals come from talking to people in your area who have recently had landscapes built that you like on homes similar in style and value to yours. You mentioned that you are in a rural area which would make one assume that there is not a lot of properties that would fit the description above. That really cuts down on the opportunity for word of mouth referal. Because of that limitation, I think you have the choice of trying to complicate the process, or to just dive in and speak directly with people offering these services in order to try to find one that you are comfortable with and is interested in your project. You will wind up doing that no matter how you determine who you will call. I'm suggesting that it might take less time and effort to start there given that most rural areas do not have a huge long list of LAs and LDs in the yellow pages. I would not discount those that do not advertise heavily. This is a business that requires a lot of time invested in a project before you actually get a signed contract to work - driving out to meet client, spending time discussing project, walk through the project, show portfolio and self promote, define the scope of work, and write up a proposal. Advertising heavily draws lots of dead leads which burn up a lot of time. Consequently, busier people tend to advertise less in order to avoid that wasted time. Word of mouth referals are much better to the designer because they tend to match the profile of the people who he already has done work for therefore having a much higher liklihood of getting the work. There are several things working against you that is going to limit the response to you. I'm not trying to rain on the parade, but only to point out how it is viewed from the other end of the phone line. 1. You are in a rural area - Often landscaping is a keep up with the Jonses thing. If the Jonses don't have much, the Smith's are not usually looking for much either. It also means more time invested in trying to get the work due to the distance. 2. You are going to implement the job over a longer period of time. That will deflate any design/build company because they translate that to mean that you don't want to spend any money on having them build it or you want to do some of it yourself. 3. A small budget to start with. - This combined with the above is going to make a prospective LD/LA think twice about taking the time to pursue the job. This is because they know they have to make their income on the design alone since there will be little opportunity to manage the project or sell materials. Designers learn very early on that when the budget is low people don't tend to spend a grand or two on a design. While it is not always true, it is not a productive segment of the market, so it is usually avoided. What a potential client sees to be an opportunity for a designer can also be seen as a high potential of a lot of time and effort invested in a low paying job with a very slim chance of getting it. What do you expect to pay for a Master Plan?

I can attest to the advantage of living in a small town, though not rural. On the day of my DH's funeral we had a deep, unexpected snow. Some of my family came from Maryland for the funeral. They were delayed because of the weather and when they got to my house, we had all left. Not knowing where the church was, they looked in the telephone book to call a cab. When they said they were going to a funeral, the cab guy knew whose funeral it was. Wouldn't want live in a big city. Sue

I wrote a lengthy reply to this thread the other day, and it got lost! I'll try again. Small homes are fascinating to me, not only because we are on a desperately tight budget, but because I think they are actually better in many ways. I read somewhere that 500 sq ft per person works well, and that does seem to be about right. Our first house in FL was 800 sq ft, and it was fine for two of us. It had an over-size garage and a big back porch. Coupled with FL's year-round nice weather, it was very livable. The same thing in the Great White North might bring on a bit of cabin fever! I think people living together need to have a way to get away from each other from time to time. Some kind of space that is your own. That would be very hard to do in a tiny house, although a loft would help. One snag with tiny houses is zoning and building codes. Many of the things you see in tiny houses (and old houses) simply aren't legal in much of the country these days. Many communities have 'anti-shack' laws which flat-out eliminate the tiny houses. Many of the properties we looked at in SC had minimum square footage requirements; one lot required 2400 sq ft minimum! Stairs, my nemesis, are very tricky in small houses. That cute little winding staircase in that old house is way out of code. In my mother's old house, the rise was greater than the run! It was almost ladder-like. Even a loft ladder is taboo unless the loft is designated 'storage'. A really easy way around all this is to build your tiny on a trailer, in which case it is no longer a dwelling. Of course many places won't let you park a trailer on your lot, either. Aaaarrrggghhh! I'm SO tired of being told what is good for me! In designing our future house, I've added two luxuries- a second bathroom, and stairs. We will have a walk-out basement, so stairs are a necessity. Yes, you could enter the basement from outside, but that doesn't make much sense. I also will not put the laundry in the basement- too many stairs to run up and down in our old age. If we take the 500 sq ft per person rule, and add the 2nd bath, the stairs, and a main floor laundry, it keeps coming up 1200 sq ft- exactly what I keep hitting in my house designs. I've shrunk plans down to 800 sq ft or so, but always wind up giving up things. In the final analysis, every house needs the expensive stuff- land, water, septic, kitchen, bath, heat and A/C, windows. Once those things are paid for, a few hundred extra sq ft is pretty cheap. Living in a tiny house permanently would require a huge paradigm shift for most people. You would have to get rid of all of your stuff. Buying, building, or renting storage space kind of negates the whole tiny house ideal. If we are forced by finances to build a much smaller house, I'm going to build several small outbuildings for various activities, and only heat them when in use. My wife would love a tiny 'Sewing House', and I could practice trumpet til my heart's content in the 'Music Cabin'. These would be small enough to be classed 'sheds' to the zoning folk, and luckily I have plenty of room for this scenario. Regardless of what we build, the barn will be first, and 1/3 of it will be closed off and set up as a summer living room, with A/C, paneling, and windows. That will give us a great room for a crowd, and we don't have to heat it when not in use. As you can see, I could go on and on about this stuff!

RTHawk, not sure where you're located but these are not elaborate docks by Southern standards. Many lakes w/ stable water levels have covered docks and people spend a lot of time out there. If you were to see the lakes in Georgia, Lake Norman in the Charlotte area then you will see some tricked out docks (double levels, slides, etc.). We just wanted the dock to match the lines of the house otherwise, the dock is 1 level, has 1 boatslip, a small storage room. We just tried to design it well (still needs finishing) and make it comfortable to spend time on. Here's what it's looking like now: