Design · Build · Maintain — one crew, no subs
Native-first design, built for Blue Ridge slope and soil. Clay ground, 47 inches of rain, a north-facing grade — we plant for the site you have, not the catalog photo.
The $150 on-site consult is credited in full to any project we build.
4.9 · 298 Google reviewsNC Licensed Landscape Contractor #2417
The field catalog
Plant list · why us
Anyone with a truck and a trailer can plant a maple. Making a garden thrive on a Blue Ridge slope — through clay, downpours, deer, and a late April frost — is a different trade. That trade is ours.
Wren holds a horticulture degree from NC State. Every plant is picked for your soil, your light, your elevation — butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa) where it's hot and dry, foamflower (Tiarella cordifolia) in the shade.
Sam built trails and stone steps for the Forest Service before he built patios. Our stonework is dry-laid the old way, on compacted base, pitched to shed water. It does not move.
At least 70% native species in every plan. Natives root deeper, drink less, feed the birds and pollinators, and shrug off weather that kills nursery exotics.
The people who dig the footings are the people who set the stone and plant the beds. Nobody hands your yard off to a stranger halfway through.
Forty-seven inches of rain a year finds every mistake. We solve the water first — swales, drains, terracing — and warranty that work for five years.
340+
Gardens designed & built since 2015
47"
Annual WNC rainfall every plan is drained for
70%+
Native species minimum in every planting plan
5 yr
Warranty on drainage & stonework
The trail map
No. 01
Wren comes to you, walks every corner of the property, and reads the site: sun path, slope, drainage lines, what the soil is doing six inches down. You talk about how you actually want to live out there. $150, credited to the build.
No. 02
You get a master plan with a scaled layout, a full plant list — botanical names and all — stone selections, and a line-item price. Not an estimate that doubles later. A price.
No. 03
One crew, ours, start to finish. Sam runs every build. Drainage goes in before anything pretty does, stone gets set on proper base, and plants go in the ground the week they leave the nursery.
No. 04
A garden is a living thing — year one decides the next twenty. Our maintenance crew (actual horticulturists, pruning by hand) keeps what we built getting better every season.
$150, 60–90 minutes, credited in full to any project.
Field notes · who we are
Understory is Wren and Sam Calloway — a designer who thinks in root systems and a builder who learned stonework where failure isn't an option. Married since 2012, building gardens together since 2015.
Field note, spring: if your 'landscaper' can't tell you why your hydrangea never blooms, ask them what wood it flowers on. If they blink — call us.Meet Wren, Sam & the crew →
From the field
4.9 stars · 298 Google reviews
“Two years in, the garden looks like it was always here. That was the point, and they hit it.”
— Margaret & Tom H., Montford, Asheville · Full design + build
“We were losing the bank behind the house every storm — you could measure it. Sam's crew terraced it with dry-laid stone and planted the whole thing in grasses and natives. Went through two tropical-storm remnants since and the slope hasn't given an inch. Only contractor who ever offered a warranty on drainage work, and the only one whose fix held.”
“I asked them to get rid of my lawn and they did not blink. Front yard is now coneflower, bee balm, little bluestem, and a fieldstone path, and I've counted eleven kinds of butterflies from the porch. Neighbors stop and photograph it. My water bill dropped by half. I'm the neighborhood radical now and I could not be happier about it.”
“They were honest that year one would look like a science experiment, and it did. Then May of year two happened and the whole half acre went up in bloom — goldfinches on the coneflowers, fireflies like we remember from being kids. Our daughter's wedding photos were taken standing in it. Worth every dollar and both years.”
Where we work
We work where we live: Buncombe and Henderson counties, roughly thirty minutes from the studio in the River Arts District. Every town below gets the same crew, the same warranty, and the same opinions about dyed mulch.
Common questions
It's 60–90 minutes on your property with Wren or a senior designer: a full walk of the site, soil and drainage read, honest talk about scope and budget, and written notes afterward. And yes — the full $150 comes off any project we build for you, no fine print. We charge for it because free estimates get you a guy pacing your yard for eight minutes; a real site read takes time and is worth something.
Design consults: usually one to two weeks. Builds: six to ten weeks in spring, faster in late summer and fall. Fall is the best-kept secret in mountain planting anyway — warm soil, cool air, and a full season of root growth before summer asks anything of the plants.
Yes — NC Licensed Landscape Contractor #2417, fully insured for liability and workers' comp, and happy to send certificates before we start. Anyone working unlicensed on retaining walls or drainage in this county is a risk you don't need to take.
Native-first, not native-only. Every plan is at least 70% native species because they outperform here — deeper roots, less water, more habitat. But if a peony from your grandmother's garden needs a home, we'll find it a good one. Dogma makes bad gardens; judgment makes good ones.
Book the site walk. Wren reads the slope, the soil, and the water — and you get a plan that belongs to these mountains, with a real price on it.
The $150 on-site consult is credited in full to any project we build.
