The practice · Four disciplines
Built in stone, finished in green.
Every figure below is a starting point, not a quote. After a site walk you receive one fixed proposal — materials, drawings, and schedule — and the price on it is the price you pay.
No. 01 Patios & walkways
Rooms without ceilings.
A terrace is a room you live in eight months of the year — it deserves the same care as any interior. We set thermal bluestone, weathered granite, and reclaimed cobble over properly built bases: excavated to grade, compacted in lifts, drained so frost has nothing to grip. Joints are tight, edges are true, and the pitch carries water away without your ever noticing it.
Walkways get the same discipline at a smaller scale — the path from drive to door is the first impression your home makes, and the one you use most.
- Thermal & natural-cleft bluestone, Goshen stone, reclaimed granite cobble
- Dry-laid on open-graded base — no slab, no cracking, fully repairable
- Integrated steps, landings, and seat-height edge walls
- Grading and drainage resolved before the first stone is placed
No. 02 Retaining walls
Holding ground, quietly.
The South Coast sits on glacial till and surfacing ledge — sloped lots are the rule, not the exception. A good wall turns that slope into usable ground: a level lawn, a planting bed, a place for the terrace to sit. We build dry-laid fieldstone walls in the New England manner — battered faces, through-stones, hearting packed by hand — and bring in engineering where height and surcharge demand it.
Dry-laid means the wall drains through its own body. No hydrostatic pressure, no weep holes, no failure by frost. Walls we built in 2009 have not moved.
- Dry-laid fieldstone & granite, faced or freestanding
- Engineered systems for retained heights over four feet
- Seat walls, stone steps, and pier caps to match
- Drainage stone and geotextile behind every course
No. 03 Planting design
The soft half of hard landscape.
Stone gives a garden its bones; planting gives it a life. We design in drifts rather than dots — inkberry, bayberry, little bluestem, hydrangea, amsonia — species that shrug off salt wind and hold their structure through a South Coast winter. The goal is a garden that looks composed in February and abundant in July, and that asks less of you each year, not more.
Every planting plan is drawn to scale, keyed by species, and installed by our own crew in amended, decompacted soil. We come back the following spring to edit — that visit is included.
- Coastal natives and proven cultivars, salt- and deer-conscious
- Scaled planting plans you keep — every plant named and placed
- Soil rebuilt before anything goes in the ground
- First-spring editing visit included with every installation
No. 04 Seasonal care
Gardens are tended, not finished.
A landscape is a living thing; handing it back to you and driving away is half a job. Our care programs run April through November and are limited to properties we designed or built, so the people pruning your hydrangeas are the ones who planted them. Visits follow the season, not a mowing calendar — spring cutbacks, summer editing, joint and stone inspection, a proper closing before frost.
Program clients also get first call on the schedule for new work — useful when a gate, a step, or one more bed makes itself necessary.
- April–November program, visits paced to the season
- Pruning, editing, and division by the original planting plan
- Annual inspection of joints, steps, and wall faces
- Fall closing: cutbacks, protection, and a spring plan
Figures reflect typical minimum engagements on the South Coast and vary with access, ledge, and material. A fixed proposal follows every consultation — no allowances, no surprises.
Tell us about your ground.
A consultation costs nothing and commits you to nothing. Most projects begin with a single unhurried walk.