We’re posting transcripts of Working, Slate’s podcast about what people do all day, exclusively for Slate Plus members. What follows is the transcript for Season 5, Episode 9.

In this episode of Working, Slate’s Jacob Brogan talks to Tim Noll about the one-man landscaping business he runs by word-of-mouth in Washington, D.C. What’s the day-to-day of a landscape designer like? Tim takes us through his busy schedule of building and tending his neighborhood’s backyards.    

Plus, in a Slate Plus bonus segment, Tim talks about his passion for saving the planet and the children’s books he’s written to teach kids how to do it.

Jacob Brogan: Welcome to Working, Slate’s podcast about what people do all day. I’m Jacob Brogan, and I used to be an academic. Until about a year ago, I was teaching English literature at Georgetown University. Now I’m a journalist, covering technology and culture for Slate. My own career transition left me fascinated with the ways that we work—and not just what people do for a living, but how they do their jobs. And that’s what we’ll be talking about here on Working.

For this week’s episode of Working, we’re talking with Tom Noll, a landscape designer based here in D.C., who wants his yards to be expressions of their homeowners’ personalities. We visited his own home in Bloomingdale, a neighborhood full of yards decorated by his characteristically quirky designs. And in a Slate Plus extra, we’ll learn about Tom’s children’s books, which encourage kids to recycle and care about the environment.

What’s your name, and what do you do?

Tom Noll: My name’s Tom Noll, and I’m a landscape designer.

Brogan: When you start a new landscape design project, when you sit down with a client, how do you start that conversation about what they’re looking and what you’re going to do?

Noll: Well, number one thing is, how much time do you want to spend in your yard, or how much money do you want to spend in your yard? A big thing is, do you want it just to look nice and that’s it? You don’t want to spend any time. You want a low-maintenance yard.

For a lot of clients, I look at their yard and say, they’re never going to take care of it. So, I automatically go, “You want a really low-maintenance yard, don’t you?” And then we go from there. I like to talk about their interests, what colors they like, what plants they like, if they have a selection of plants or things, how big a space they’ve got, whether it’s a sunny spot, a shady spot. Different things like that.

You know, when you’re landscaping somebody’s house, you really want to get across to them that the landscaping is really a part of them. That’s what people see before they see you. How do you want to come across to those people: do you just want simple landscaping that doesn’t matter, or do you want to portray your personality?

One client had kids, and they wanted to be able to sit on the porch and watch the kids from the yard. And they just had a small little yard there. So, we came up with a couple pieces of slate that they could use as a foundation and put larger stones all the way around, so the kids could actually sit there and play with chalk and stuff on the things surrounded by plants.

Brogan: You work primarily in Bloomingdale, which is a very specific D.C. neighborhood. How does that context influence the kind of design choices you make and the ways you think about your work?

Noll: Bloomingdale is basically a lot of row houses. So, you’ve got tiny little yards in the front, which are very interesting. Some people choose to do just nothing but grass. Some people will pave it over. With the two and three-story houses, you don’t want anything that tall that’s really going to take away from the structure. You want to enhance the structure, instead take away from it with your design aspects, as far as plants go.

Brogan: The house, and the size of the yard, and those kind of existing structural elements that you can’t change shape where you go from there.

Noll:  Exactly. You don’t want anything that’s overwhelming. If your window’s right at the level of that, do you really want a tree in front of your window? If you’re going to have a tree, you want something that is more trainable, like a weeping cherry or something like that. You don’t want to put a crapemyrtle in front of your window there. In two or three years, you’re not going to be able to see out without pruning it.

Brogan: How do you present the design to them? What’s that part of the process?

Noll: The biggest thing is I show them pictures. But also, if they walk around with me in the neighborhood where the park is and up and down a few streets, I can show them about 30 to 40 projects that I’ve done in just little row houses and the condos and stuff. So, they get an idea and a feel for what I can do. Then I can go and ask them, “What plants do you like out of any of these yards here?” Because I try to use different plants in each yard. So, these are the low-maintenance plants. These are the high-maintenance plants. So, they can see a little bit of everything. It’s like a nursery in a couple blocks.

Brogan: If you are showing them pictures, do you draw pictures? Do you have photographs of existing projects?

Noll: I’ll draw pictures. I’ll show projects that I’ve done, but it’s kind of hard to get the feel of the landscaping when you’re doing a project. I mean, that’s the reason I really like to have them come over and see my work, because it’s just not looking at it from the front. You know, designing and placing the tree and pruning the tree is from every aspect.

I’m thinking of when you look at the window, what it’s going to be like; what are you looking at from the street; and what are you looking at from the left side or the right side? It’s a 360-degree thing. And with a picture, you just see that one angle of it.

Brogan: Do you ever build models?

Noll: No. And usually, I can just draw it on paper; sketch out an idea. On the paper, I’ll sketch it out while we’re there. I’ll just sketch out, here’s the design; here’s this; here’s what I kind of think might work for you. And a lot of it is whether they want a patio, whether they want walkways or something.

I had a client that just had a small backyard, but she really wanted an earthy feel. So, for me, it was really kind of fun—and she loves sounds. So we did a water-feature yard. We had the chimes and all of that. But we also chose to do a pea gravel path in there, which we put about two inches of pea gravel, which actually—the sound of the pea gravel when you’re walking on it—she loved that.

Brogan: Let’s talk about the process. How do you source your materials? Where do you get the plants, and the stones, and the other elements that you work into your designs?

Noll: With a client, number one is looking at their area and seeing what they need. Most of the ones that come to me, they’ve never done anything, or it really needs a lot of work. In some cases, you can prune some of the stuff and bring it back. But do they want to wait for that?

Other cases, if the plants are struggling now, usually it needs some conditioning the soil. So, usually what I recommend is adding a soil mix to the ground. When you’re working with a blank slate—say somebody wants a total redo—you’re basically having to kill off the plants. So, basically, if you’ve got a lot of crabgrass, ivy, or something like that you really want to kill off, you really want to do Roundup.

Depending on the time of year, you could do Roundup. It’s a process. You really want to knock down the ivy with a weed whacker. And once the new ivy comes up, once that starts to come up and sprout, then you spray it with the Roundup. Once you clear the yard, then I go to the nursery. I tell a lot of my clients, we can go to Home Depot. I can get some of the prices even cheaper at Home Depot, and then just work on my design; fee’s a little higher, because I don’t have the markup on all the plants.

Brogan: You also use a lot of rocks and sometimes even other kinds of construction elements, like rebar, in your work. Where do those come from?

Noll: Those all come from landscaping companies, wholesale places for stone and slate, different things like that.

Brogan: Can you walk us through, then, the step-by-step installation process for a project? We’ve cleared the land. We have our plants. We have the stones and presumably other stuff like mulch and such. What goes in first? What’s your first step on a big project?

Noll: The first step is getting the structure part of it. If they wanted a little slate patio, or whether they wanted something there, placing the stones, because they’re the heaviest part of it, and then the bushes, the trees first, and then the bushes, if you’re going with that, and then the flowers afterwards, and then basically digging the holes. Usually, by that time, you’ve had the soil conditioned, so you’re just basically putting in the plants.

Brogan: Do you do all of that work yourself, or do you have other people that work with you?

Noll: I kind of want to be there, because in small yards, I pick out the trees personally, and I know exactly how I want them angled out or this or that. I’ve got people that I work with, that I can say, OK, I want this exactly here, and then I can go onto another project. But I kind of oversee it. I’ll come back, and if it’s not placed right, I’ll still move it a few inches if it’s not exactly where I wanted it.

Brogan: So, when you’re planting a tree, what goes into that, in particular?

Noll: One of the things when you’re planting a tree is that when you get it out of the pot, you really want to take a knife, a mat knife or something like that, and really slice the roots when it comes out of the pot. The roots are really bound in the plastic container. So, you really want to loosen those up so it goes out.

One of the things is, too, the biggest number one thing for people to keep their garden going is to water the plants. They’re so used to being watered in just the pots, so it just gets on the pot. And people, when they tend to water, they water just on the plant. Well, what you want to do is water a circle around the container, the plant, so the roots go out and into that, and water circles around instead of where the plant is. When I tell you that, it kind of makes sense. It’s like, OK, the roots are going to grow out. The more roots there are, the more it’s going to acclimate itself. Where if you water only where the root is, the roots go right back into where the root is. So, it’s a lot harder.

Brogan: So, we might be getting ahead of ourselves a little here, but what goes into educating your clients about how to take care of the yard that you’ve designed and installed for them?

Noll: Educating them, that’s a hard thing. It never comes around that well. Usually, I maintain it for at least three months after the project, the watering, and weeding, and that bit. And then usually, they decide that they don’t want to do anything at all, so they’ll usually hire me to maintain it for the rest of the year.

But again, at that point, I’ll go by it, and I’m walking in the neighborhood all the time, so I’m seeing the yards that I do. So, it’s like if they need water, I’ll sometimes knock on the door, or give them a call and say—or I’ll grab the hose and water myself.

Brogan: So, to return to the installation process, what are the most challenging elements to install in a yard?

Noll:  I would say that soil conditions is the number one thing. And it depends on whether they—you know, some people don’t realize that when you go digging in there, there might have been a cement slab under there. It looks like there was nothing there, but there’s a little bit of dirt there. And I had one project where it was like we were doing this landscaping, and, you know, there was dirt, and mulch, and a few plants. And we got digging down, me and a couple of workers, and there was a whole cement slab under there.

So, we had to readjust whether they wanted what we’d planed. I had the plants and everything. We were ready to go. But there was a cement slab over the whole 8x10 area. So, we decided to do some container gardening instead.

Brogan: What’s your favorite part of the installation process?

Noll: The finishing. When it’s done, and looking at it, and seeing, oh, that’s exactly—and sometimes it comes out better than what I thought it would.

Brogan: How do you get to that point? What’s the last thing that you do at a property?

Noll: See if the clients like it. Hopefully they do.

Brogan: Have you ever had an experience where they don’t, where you had to rework what you were doing?

Noll: Actually, I haven’t. Well, what I do is—and I do it a little bit differently, too—is once I get the plans, I take them over there, and I’ll place them along with the rocks before I even put them in the ground, saying, what do you think of this? And we’ll talk. And if you want it over a little bit, that’s fine. Or let’s do this, or this, or this. But I usually do that before I actually place them in the ground, which saves me a lot of trouble.

Brogan: So, that dialogue that you have at the beginning with them is ongoing throughout the installation process?

Noll: Yeah, throughout the process. And for me, it’s more of an artistic thing, communicating with them. Some just want it done, and they don’t want to talk, they have busy schedules and stuff like that. They just say, I know what you’re doing is right, just do it.

Brogan: So, is a project ever truly, totally, and finally finished?

Noll:  It’s never truly and totally finished, because plants grow. A lot of houses in the row houses and stuff that you want the plants small in, they’re never going to spend the money for dwarf plants. And dwarf plants are the only ones that are going to actually stay that size and not grow. It’s nature. So, it’s going to grow. And if you don’t prune the stuff, I can put it in one year, and two years later, it could be a jungle if you’re not going to prune it.

So, basically, following up on it, I’ve put in gardens where it’s like oh my God. I’ll go back a couple years later, and they’ve never done anything. And of course, I’ve conditioned the soil and everything, so everything’s growing, and it’s a huge jungle.

Brogan: What sorts of maintenance do you do in a given day? If we’re looking at a day of your life where you’re not working with a client, you’re not installing a new yard, but you’re going around and doing your maintenance, what’s your day look like?

Noll: The first thing that I do is probably garbage bags in my pocket that I carry around all the time, and just basically pick up the trash first and then the weeds. A day after it rains is when I’m out weeding. If I’ve got a few extra hours, that’s what I’m doing: walking around the neighborhood, in the projects that I do, and weeding, because the soil’s actually wet then, and you can weed. Because what happens if you wait until the summer, when it’s really dry, then the roots aren’t coming out, so you just end up having to—and a lot of times, I don’t want to deal, I don’t want to use a lot of chemicals.

Brogan: So, it’s a rainy day. You’ve got garbage bags in your pocket. You head out, and you’re walking around the neighborhood—what are you looking for?

Noll: Pulling out weeds—anything that doesn’t belong there, anything that just—

Brogan: Just in yards that you’ve worked on, or are you just looking for weeds generally?

Noll: Well, all the yards that I work on and maintenance are first. And then, if there’s some in the neighborhood, sometimes it’ll drive me crazy if I go by a house, and there’s not many weeds. And again, you have to ask. A lot of people don’t want their—I had one neighbor there that I was cleaning up one time about three years ago, and they got mad because I cleaned up the leaves and stuff around their house. So, we don’t assume anything anymore.

Brogan: How did you get started in landscape design?

Noll:  I got started very young. I was 20 at the time, and started doing exterior landscaping and stuff in Ohio. Arizona, then I was in Arizona for a while, and then I did interior and exterior landscaping there, working with cactus and things like that.

Brogan: How do your clients first get in touch with you?

Noll: They usually just see my little thing down there with the phone number on there, and they call me. Most of the neighbors know me now, or their neighbors will say who did your yard, and stuff like that. And I get probably six, seven, eight, ten yards a year. It’s all word of mouth, yeah.

Brogan: How long does a project take, from those first conversations to completion, usually?

Noll: If the plants are available, sometimes I could have it done in four or five days, little yards out front that I’ve got. Just depends on the availability of the plants, and the stones, and the workers.

Brogan: What’s the usual cost of a project of the kind that you do here in Bloomingdale?

Noll: Usually, the cost of a project in Bloomingdale that I do in the little 8x12, 8x15 yards can range from $800 to about $1,400, depending on how many stones and how many ornamental trees they want. A lot of the ornamental trees are—a six or eight-foot Japanese maple can be $350. And you add the stones on top of that; some of the stones can be $30 or $40 apiece.

Brogan: So, that’s the cost of materials.

Noll: Materials, my fee. Most of the ones that I do, I would price around—that would be around $1,300 to $1,500. That’s the stones, design part, sculptures, everything put together.

Brogan: And installation, as well?

Noll:  And installation, everything.

Brogan: How many projects do you have to have going for your business to be sustainable?

Noll:  I schedule out between the landscaping, and then I work with Daylily Landscaping, which really helps a lot. That’s substantial income there. And she brings me in with different pruning projects and things like that. Sometimes, bringing a house back is nothing but basically a drastic pruning project, mulching and stuff like that. It’s not a total disaster. There’s been clients where they just say, I want it all gone, and I’m like, well, give me a day, and let me just prune some of the stuff, and see if you don’t like it better, and then they’ll find that they don’t really have to do anything. They might add some rocks.

Brogan: So, what’s a pruning project look like? Can you walk us through that process?

Noll: A pruning project is basically looking at a tree or a bush that you’re really going to prune, whether it’s way overgrown or semi-overgrown. In a shrub, you want to cut back the edges of it, but you also want to allow for the growth for this year. So, when you’re cutting it back, it’s going to grow, like, two or three inches.

So, you really need to cut it back, but you don’t want it to be bare. So, wherever you can dig in there to get the size that you really want—but really, when you’re pruning it, you want it smaller than what you’re pruning it at. It’s basically, you’re playing God and shaping it, whether you want it in the shape of a chicken or something like that. I’ve got some of the ones out there that I’ve made into peacocks or chickens in my yard, out of yew plants, which are fairly easy to do.

But pruning is just basically controlling the plant to the shape and the size that you want.

Brogan: So, if someone wants to get started in landscape design, how do they begin?

Noll: It’s a passion for plants, first, number one, and learning about plants. You can volunteer. There’re all kinds of native plant societies now and stuff. That seems to be the new and upcoming thing. Join a garden club. That’s the number one thing. All garden clubs aren’t like grandma’s garden club, where you were doing flower arrangements. They still do that aspect of it and things like that, but there’s a lot of involvement with community, and you get a lot of plants that way. Garden people are always swapping plants.

Brogan: Well, thank you so much, Tom. It’s been a pleasure.

Noll: Thank you.

Brogan: Thanks for listening to this episode of Working. I’m Jacob Brogan. In the Slate Plus extra, Tom Noll tells us about his children’s books, Bicycle Fence and Selling Eggs.

Noll: The first book is called The Bicycle Fence. It’s a Trash to Treasure Series: Recycling Creatively with LT, The Bicycle Fence. It’s about my childhood, growing up. And I’m 60 this year. So, I was recycling way before it was even fashionable. And my story’s about just recycling before it was a fad.

Brogan: What made you want to write it?

Noll:  I just have a passion for teaching kids about recycling. Since I had the bicycle fence for years in Manassas, and now I have a bicycle fence here in the park here, I painted the bicycles white. And basically, it was old bicycles that I had that I just recycled.

Brogan: Why a fence made out of bicycles?

Noll: It was like, Martha Stewart has her white picket fence; well, I have my bicycle fence. Basically, it’s an idea. I look at the bicycles. But the bicycle painted white basically becomes an art form to me. And then lining them up just became more of an art form. So, it’s like an art installation.

Brogan: What’s your second book?

Noll:  The second book is called Selling Eggs. Both of them are gold Mom’s Choice awards. The Bicycle Fence got it for 2014. Selling Eggs got it for 2015. And Selling Eggs is his adventures about—he has a chicken, Sarah, which rides on the handlebars of his bicycle when he goes to see Grandma and Grandpa. And his adventure is raising chicks—because he thinks he’s getting chickens.

He takes care of Grandmother’s chickens while they’re gone on vacation. And he wants some chickens of his own so he can get some egg money. And a box of chicks come in the mail. So, he has to raise the chicks before he gets the eggs.

Brogan: Is that based on your own experiences, too?

Noll: It’s based on my own experiences, yes. At the end of the story, he has fresh eggs.

Brogan: So, you wrote these books. You’re an artist. Did you illustrate them, as well?

Noll: No, I didn’t illustrate them. I oversaw the illustrations of the books. The illustrator would send us a thumbnail sketch, and then we’d decide whether we want to add something or take something away.

Brogan: How did you go about getting them published?

Noll: We ended up going through Green Kids Press. It’s a small press company here in Washington, D.C.

Brogan: Do these books connect with your work as a landscape designer?

Noll: Not as much as a landscape designer, but basically an influence on environmental things. In the books, I have 15 tips to help kids recycle and save the Earth, and they also have two pages of recycling facts.

Brogan: Can you give us a tip and a fact—your favorites?

Noll: Tip and a fact, OK. You can plant a tree to save and cool down the—

Brogan: Is that a tip or a fact?

Noll: A tip and a fact.

Brogan: So, you can plant a tree. What else?

Noll: Plant trees. Shut off the water when you brush your teeth. Picking up trash, things like that—and ride a bicycle.

Brogan: Can you read us a page or two of one of the books; give us just a little hint what we’re getting into?

Noll:  OK, we’re going down the first one here. In the small town of Greenville, not very far away, lives a creative young boy named LT. He is known for his recycled bicycle fence in his yard, a recycled bicycle, two recycled pets—a dog named Rex and a cat named Sebastian that he rescued from the animal shelter—and his dad’s recycled rainbow truck. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, LT liked to say.

Now whenever LT visits his grandparents’ farm, he puts his favorite chicken, Sarah, on the handlebars of his recycled bicycle. He gives her a ride around the barnyard. Now Sarah, she ruffles her feathers and squawks with excitement, and she always lays an egg.

Brogan: This is from?

Noll:  Selling Eggs.

Brogan: Selling Eggs. So, where can people get this?

Noll: They can get it on Amazon.com or at a bookstore.