A Techo-Pro Certified Installer vs. a General Landscaper: What's the Difference?

You’re standing in your backyard with two business cards. One is a landscaper who mentioned they just happen to do pavers as well. The other one is for a company that specifically builds hardscapes. Both companies can install a patio for you, and on the surface the quotes might even be pretty close. So what’s the actual difference, and does it matter once the work is already done?

My name is Randy Thompson. I founded All-Out Hardscapes LLC, which I left a career in aerospace to do. Over the past decade my crew has built more than 150 patios, walkways, and outdoor living spaces all over Savannah and the Coastal Lowcountry, from Wilmington Island to Savannah Quarters. I’m the only certified Techo-Pro installer in the area, which I’ll explain a little better in just a minute.

The way I see it, a landscaper who also lays pavers and a company that builds hardscapes for a living aren’t the same thing. The difference is actually huge, and you can’t really tell on the surface, so it’s worth understanding before you sign anything.

What’s Actually Different Between a Certified Installer and a Landscaper?

Well, like we said, the short version is focus and training. A general landscaper’s core business is living things like lawns, beds, mulch, trees, and irrigation. Pavers are a side service that a lot of landscapers will add, but the time it takes competes with their main jobs like their mowing route and planting jobs. A certified installer’s main business is the hardscape itself like the patio, the walkway, the wall, and the base underneath all of it. Hardscape is the built, non-living part of a yard, the pavers, stone, and walls, as opposed to the landscape, which is living things like plants and grass.

When pavers are just kinda what they do on the side, the hardscape installations really don’t take priority the way they should. Their usual method is to just lay some sand, set the stone, and move on to other jobs. When the hardscaping is the main focus, a lot of skills and hours go into it. That’s the fork in the road, and almost everything else follows from it.

What Does “Certified Techo-Pro Installer” Even Mean?

Techo-Pro is a certification from Techo-Bloc, which is one of the industry’s leading paver manufacturers, for installers who are trained to install their products to their specific standards. It is one certification, not a tier or a rank you climb. We are the only certified Techo-Pro installer in the Lowcountry.

Being certified as a Techo-Pro installer is a big deal because Techo-Bloc is one of the biggest and best companies when it comes to pavers, but they haven’t really broken into our area big time yet. We have a guy on our crew who spent 15 years working for pool companies and handled a lot of brick, and he’d never even heard of Techo-Bloc before he came to us. It’s not really about the brand name on the box. The point is that a certification means the crew has been trained professionally to use the right method of building, instead of however a crew feels like doing it at the time of the job.

Why Does It Matter Who’s Under Your Pavers?

This is actually the one we totally rebuilt our company around. We changed our official business name from just a lawn-care company to All-Out Hardscapes LLC. That’s because we were getting so many landscaping jobs we didn’t get to any of the hardscaping stuff, and those jobs were pushed out for months. The patios, which take the most skill and last the longest, kept getting pushed back on the schedule because we had too much mowing and planting to do, and we wanted it the other way around. We believe it’s better for the hardscape to come first and the landscaping to be sort of the side dish that goes with it.

For most people who are looking to get a patio installed, being pushed back on the schedule for months just doesn’t work for them. A paver patio is a professionally built structure. The pavers you can see are the easy part. What your money is really going to is the base underneath, the layers that decide if your patio sits flat for decades or starts to shift and fail after a few wet seasons. In our sandy Lowcountry soil, that base work determines whether a patio lasts or whether it doesn’t, it’s everything. A crew that builds hardscapes every single day gets very good at that underneath part that you can’t see. A crew that does it between landscaping jobs is basically just practicing on your backyard.

You also have to think about the materials. The quality of the stone from a top manufacturer, compared to a lot of the local block, is a huge difference. But as with anything, that quality is more expensive, just like the old saying you get what you pay for. A certified installer is usually working with better materials and building to a higher standard, and you’re going to pay a little more for that.

Do I Lose the Landscaping If I Hire a Hardscaper?

People ask us this all the time. They want to know if hiring the patio specialist means they’ll end up with a beautiful patio but a messed-up yard.

No. You don’t have hardscaping without plants and grass, so the landscaping just comes with the territory. We still do the sod, the dirt, the plants, the irrigation, and everything else outside the house. We just did a job on Wilmington Island, and what we did was we put the patio in and then landscaped the entire backyard about a week later. The only difference is the order we do things in. The hardscape needs to go first, and the green stuff gets built around it, instead of your patio waiting in line behind a season of landscaping work.

When Is a General Landscaper the Right Call?

A hardscaping specialist isn’t always the right answer. If you just need lawn care, fresh beds, a few trees, seasonal color, or a cleanup, that’s landscaping, and a good landscaper is exactly who you should call. You don’t need a certified hardscape crew to do basic yard work, and paying for one would be a waste of money.

And here’s the honest part about us specifically. We are not going to be the cheapest company you talk to. We would actually say we are one of the most expensive companies in the Lowcountry for a patio. That’s not something we’re proud of, but it’s just how it works out. If the lowest possible price is the only thing you are looking at to make your decision, we’re probably not who you want to call, and that’s ok with us. But we won’t build you something that doesn’t last. If we never have to go back to your house, then we did our job correctly, that’s how we build all our patios.