Everything folks ask before booking the walk.

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.

Stonework and drainage: five years, in writing, covering settlement, wall movement, and drainage failure. Plants: one full year on anything we install, provided it's watered to the care sheet we leave you. Meadows carry a two-season establishment guarantee — we overseed year two if coverage is thin.

That's most of our portfolio. Sam's crew came up building trail in terrain machines can't reach — steep grades, tight gates, and no-machine-access backyards are quoted like any other job, not padded like a hazard.

Sparingly and deliberately. Native-first plantings mostly don't need permanent irrigation once established — that's part of the pitch. We install drip on establishment timers for new beds and simple lines for kitchen gardens, but we'll talk you out of an eight-zone sprinkler system unless your site genuinely calls for it.

Sort of — that's what the consult is. Plenty of clients book the $150 walk, take the notes, and DIY the planting. We'd rather arm you well than have you guess. When you're ready for the bigger stuff, you know where we are.

We protect what stays: plywood tracking paths, root-zone fencing around trees, photographs of everything before we open ground. Builds are messy in the middle — we're honest about that — but we restore grade, seed our tracks, and haul every scrap when we leave.

We don't finance in-house, but we phase well. The master plan splits into honest stages — infrastructure first, planting second, finish features third — each priced separately, each complete on its own. Most multi-phase clients finish the whole plan within three years.