Services

GARDEN DESIGN

Gardens are sustenance of the highest quality for your family, peace and tranquility in a busy world, and seasonal beauty to behold. I will work with you to determine exactly what you want from your garden space, analyze your soil and site constraints, choose the best plants and make it happen. From a full scale never-buy-produce-again homestead to a low maintenance bird and butterfly sanctuary. There is never a bad time to start your garden project. My garden services include, but are not limited to:

  • Vegetable gardens - Full service design and install, catered to the foods you like to eat, and maybe a few you've never heard of

  • Rain Gardens - Manage storm water responsibly, correct drainage problems

  • Home orchard guilds - Grow fruit trees with berry bushes tucked underneath, encircled by native wildflowers to attract beneficial insects and pollinators

  • Bird and butterfly gardens - Attract hummingbirds, provide critical Monarch butterfly habitat

  • Lawn to meadow conversion - Stop wasting gas, let it grow! Convert your energy-consuming lawn to a storm water buffering, habitat providing, groundwater cleaning, carbon sequestering, beautiful native meadow

  • Beautiful cedar fences and gates

  • Deer-resistant ornamental gardens

  • Re-wilding with native plants

natural stone hardscape

Concrete and asphalt dominate our landscape when we're away from home, so for a delightful change of pace, I always recommend using natural stone at home, with nothing but skillful installation and gravity to hold it all together. Unlike using pavers or concrete, your project won't look like everyone else's, the color will never fade, it can freeze and thaw all it wants without any adverse effect, and you're saving the world from more ugly concrete. My natural stone hardscape services include:

   • Patios and walkways

   • Retaining walls

   • Fire Pits

wood fired ovens

Cob oven, brick oven, pizza oven, wood fired oven- built in various styles and known by many names, it’s the ultimate backyard showpiece, and a unique gathering place for family and friends. Fired with hardwood, these ovens reach temperature of over 900° F for cooking perfect pizzas in 2 minutes or less. Remove the coals, shut the door, and the oven will hold heat for a very long time, maintaining temperatures perfect for bread baking (500-600°) for about 2 hours, then baking temperatures for meats, casseroles, cookies, you-name-it in the (300-400°) for several hours after that. These ovens will do a better job to cook anything you can cook in a normal oven using nothing but ancient technology and firewood, a renewable local resource. 

Ever wonder why brick oven pizza is so good? It's the oven! Here's why: The cheese, crust, and toppings all need to cook at the same rate, a task most ovens are not up to. Unlike any other oven, these ovens cook with all three types of heat- conductive, convective, and radiant:

Conduction comes from direct contact with the hot bricks of the oven floor. Convection from the circulating hot air inside the oven. Radiation from the thermal mass of the oven wall, which holds the initial firing heat and releases it slowly and eve…

Conduction comes from direct contact with the hot bricks of the oven floor. Convection from the circulating hot air inside the oven. Radiation from the thermal mass of the oven wall, which holds the initial firing heat and releases it slowly and evenly.

custom projects

My skills are applicable to a wide variety of custom projects, including but not limited to:

  • Woodworking

  • Metal fabrication

  • Greenhouses

  • Planters

  • Tile

  • Pergolas, boardwalks, decking

  • Drainage issues