Situation
We were brought in to plan a multi-acre Hill Country estate. The previous contractor had already begun installing irrigation — about three weeks into the project, before any grading review, planting strategy, or hydrology read.
Observation
We arrived to find roughly $14,000 of buried PVC running directly through the only viable rain-garden site on the property. The mainline crossed under a planned aqueduct grade. The system was perfectly capable of watering things, but it was watering the wrong things in the wrong places.
What we learned
The previous contractor wasn't wrong about needing irrigation. He was wrong about sequence. Every landscape failure we have seen in the last five years starts the same way: build before read. Plant before plan. Pipe before grade. The work is almost never about doing more. It is about doing in the right order.
Sequence is the most expensive variable on the property. Get it wrong and the budget multiplies.