How we score landscape designers in Charlotte Metro

What this page covers

Charlotte Deck Builder Guide currently scores 186 landscape designer businesses across Charlotte Metro. This page explains exactly how that score is built, why each part of it matters when you're picking someone to design and build outdoor space at your home, and where the score's limits are. Nothing here is marketing copy. It's the rubric, in plain language.

The five signals, heaviest first

Every business gets a composite score from 0 to 100, built from five measured signals. We list them here in order of weight, because the order tells you what we think matters most.

Sentiment (28%): a synthesis of what recent reviews actually say, praise and complaints alike, not just the star count attached to them.
the team (26%): the business's aggregate star rating on Google.
Volume (20%): how many reviews a business has, log-scaled so a business with 400 reviews isn't drowned out by one with 4, but also isn't infinitely rewarded for scale either.
Recency (10%): how recently customers have actually reviewed the business, since a designer who was great five years ago may not be the same crew today.
Completeness (16%): whether basic contact information, phone, website, hours, and address, is listed and accurate.

Why sentiment carries the most weight

A star average can hide patterns that matter to you. Two landscape designers can sit at the same 4.3 stars, but one of them might have a string of recent reviews all mentioning the same thing: missed appointments, a design that didn't match what was promised, drainage problems after installation. The average alone won't show you that. Reading what people actually wrote, and looking for repeated themes, is the only way to catch it before you sign a contract. That's why sentiment is weighted above the raw star rating itself, not instead of it.

Why the other signals matter

the team still counts for a lot, 26%, because it's the fastest signal of overall satisfaction and it's what most homeowners check first. Volume matters because a 5.0 rating from three reviews tells you a lot less than a 4.6 from three hundred. Log-scaling means volume rewards businesses with a real track record without letting sheer review count overwhelm everything else. Recency matters because landscape design businesses change: crews turn over, ownership changes, quality drifts up or down. A business with glowing reviews from 2019 and silence since deserves a different look than one with steady, recent feedback. Completeness, 16%, is the practical signal: can you actually reach this business, find their hours, check their site, and confirm an address before you invite them to quote a project at your home.

Honest limits of this score

This system is built from public review and business data, and it has real limits. Businesses with few recent reviews get a low-confidence score, and we label those clearly on their listing rather than presenting them with false certainty. We synthesize themes from reviews rather than republishing them word for word, and we link out to Google so you can read the original reviews yourself and judge the source directly.

Scores are earned, not edited

Every score on this site comes from the rubric above applied to measured data. It is never adjusted by hand. Where paid placement exists anywhere on this site, it is always labeled as such and it never changes a business's score. If any list's picks or order were reviewed or curated by an editor rather than generated purely from the rubric, that is disclosed directly on that page. You can see our current rankings on the best residential landscape design list.

Who publishes this and how it's maintained

Charlotte Deck Builder Guide is published by Great Work Research, an independent publisher founded in 2025 to help homeowners in the Charlotte area find deck builders and landscape designers they can trust. We work from public business records, verified customer reviews, and market data, and we don't sell placement in our rankings. Rod Burnett, Lead researcher, holds editorial oversight of the rankings and methodology on this site. Our data refreshes monthly, and each listing carries a "last verified" stamp so you can see it's actively maintained rather than left to go stale. You can reach the publisher at info@reallygreatwork.com or visit reallygreatwork.com, and browse the full directory from our home page.