Congenial Craftsmanship

I've worked with Roy on three different projects now. Before hiring landscape professionals, I wanted someone who would work with my ideas in a congenial way. Someone who listened to my ideas, appreciated them and helped me put those things into place.

The first landscape we hired Roy to work for was a small Japanese backyard that I was putting in at a little bungalow. So I needed to know, could they work with big rocks? Could they place big rocks? Could they build beautiful, natural pathways?

They needed to be people who had taste and were good communicators, and had a lot of physical skills.

They did some beautiful stone walkways in all three of my places. One pathway was kind of formal and geometric. The others were more meandering flagstone walkways.

They installed and fine tuned watering systems. I appreciated that he's come back to adjust those as the plants grew up. The systems would need to be a little reoriented or augmented and he's done that.

He placed beautiful rocks. We made a Japanese garden in a small space and it was really great that they had all the physical skills to place these big boulders. They also had a lot of aesthetic sense about which way each rock needed to tilt a little to the left or a little more to the right.

The folks he works with are all really good. They’re good communicators and very congenial. There weren't any grumpy people. They were on time and they were cheerful in their work. I wanted to see if they could collaborate well and Roy has collaborated well with me.

We put in a great big arbor in the recent house. They built that and it was substantial and solid and well placed.

The materials he uses are really good. I felt that he could take my ideas and then show me pictures of the different ways that had been accomplished in different settings as a way of refining my ideas and then we'd come together on a solution that seemed just right. So I didn't feel like he was imposing his ideas. It seemed like a natural way for him to work.

Some of my favorite landscape details are the little Japanese garden with the standing stones. That was beautiful.

The other feature that I love is a water feature in my house that he placed at the entry. We got a big tall jug and bored a hole in the bottom and he put a pump that sends water up so that the big jug overflows gently with water. That's my water feature. It's very soft. He created a very quiet, beautiful fountain. I love the water features that he has put in.

He's done some really beautiful fencing and gates in all the places where we've lived. He just has the whole work at his disposal. He's good at everything. He put in some beautiful lighting, you know low lighting for the pathways in the garden. He was able to suggest some very high quality pretty things.

I would recommend Roy in a heartbeat for all those reasons - and he also works to his deadline. He isn't someone that you know who worked on my projects when he was working on it and David who's full time. He's very diligent. He follows through. And I need that when I'm working on a project. I like to feel like whoever is handling it is on the job, and he is. He's really good about follow through and responsibility. He returns phone calls, even on the weekend. He's just right there on it, a very professional guy.