Our Design-Build Process
Five steps, and you see it before we build it
- A short video call. Before anyone drives out, we meet on Zoom to hear what you want and make sure we are the right company for it. It is better for both of us to know that early.
- An on-site walkthrough. Our salesperson walks the property with you. We shoot grade and elevation, look at drainage, and figure out whether the project needs retaining walls or is straight patio work.
- A 2D and 3D design. We put together a preliminary drawing and a 3D view so you can see the layout before anything is final. For planting, we go through a sheet with you on colors, sizes and shapes, and whether you lean deciduous or evergreen.
- A presentation at our shop. You come in to go through the drawings. If there is block involved, you pick it in our design lab, where a Techo-Bloc mix-and-match set lets us lay out colors, shapes and sizes at full size, so you know exactly what it will look like. If there are plants, we walk out to our nursery and you tag the ones going in your yard. Changes happen here, while everyone is in the same room.
- The install and sign-off. Materials are delivered, then excavation and compaction start. We walk the job with you along the way, including where electric and gas need to run. If something changes mid-project, it goes on a written change order, and we can update the 3D drawing so you can see one option against the other. We finish with a final walkthrough and a sign-off sheet with your salesperson.
Our warranty
- Workmanship: 10 years on the work we install.
- Plants: one year from the date of install on the trees, shrubs and plants we put in.
- Techo-Bloc pavers and walls: Techo-Bloc’s transferable lifetime product warranty.
Those two warranties cover different things, and the difference matters. Techo-Bloc’s warranty covers the block itself and pays for replacement product only, not the labor to install it. It also excludes damage from a base that settles or an installation that doesn’t follow industry guidelines. The base and the installation are ours, and that is what our 10-year workmanship warranty is for.
Materials we won’t install
We don’t install materials a customer buys somewhere else. We can’t warranty something when we don’t know where it came from. For pavers and walls we work strictly with Techo-Bloc. We use a lot of Blu 60, a slab that sits in the middle of Techo-Bloc’s price range, with plenty of color and texture options, and our crews know how to put it together well. Read our guide to Techo-Bloc Blu 60.
Plants that belong here
For trees, shrubs and perennials we lean toward a native, natural look: plants that are native to Northwest Ohio or look like they could be. You pick them yourself from our nursery before they come to your yard.
How pricing works
We don’t quote landscaping projects over the phone. If you call and ask what a patio will cost, we will tell you our design fee to start with, then set up a walkthrough so we can give you a real idea after seeing the site.
Once there is a design, the price usually moves for one reason: features get added. A basic patio costs more once you add a soldier or sailor border course, seating or retaining walls, a fire pit, or outdoor kitchen components. None of that is bad. It just helps to know where the number comes from.
We are also honest about who we lose to. We offer a higher-end product, and on price we can’t compete with a Menards or Lowe’s block, or with poured concrete. If the lowest number is the goal, we may not be your company.
When to book
Our most successful projects are booked the fall before. Spring usually starts for us around the end of March, but that can swing by four weeks depending on snow, and once spring fills up there is usually a six-to-eight-week wait. If you call in November, you are usually a May project. We keep installing until the first hard freeze, usually around the end of November, and some years a 65-degree December lets us keep going.
After the install
When a project is finished, we put together a maintenance quote for it: caring for and fertilizing the shrubs, sealing the patio, topping up mulch and the rest of what keeps a new landscape looking the way it did on day one. See lawn and landscape maintenance.