Patios, planting, water and light.

The part of a patio you pay for is the part you never see. We excavate to depth, compact the base in layers and only then start setting stone, which is why our joints are still tight two winters later.

We build in native limestone and Oklahoma flagstone because they belong here and they age well. Every job gets a drawn layout and a written price before anything is lifted.

• Excavated and compacted base, built in layers
• Native limestone, flagstone or concrete pavers
• Dry-stacked retaining and seat walls
• Drainage worked out before the first stone goes down

From $3,400 for a typical 250 sq ft flagstone patio

New beds get a proper shaped edge, compost worked through the soil and a mulch layer deep enough to matter. Then we plant natives and adapted species — muhly, sotol, agave, Texas sage — because a bed that needs daily water in July is a bed you will come to resent.

Anything we plant that fails in its first year, we replace. That is easy for us to promise because we will not plant something we do not expect to survive, however much you like it.

• Bed shaping and a cut edge that holds
• Soil preparation and deep mulch
• Native and adapted planting, chosen for your light
• One-year replacement on anything we plant

From $1,200 for a full front-bed rebuild, plants included

Most yards we take over are watering the pavement. We audit head by head, fix the leaks, convert the beds to drip and set a controller schedule that matches the city's allowed days.

On a typical retrofit the water bill is the first thing the owner notices, usually on the second statement.

• Head-by-head audit with the pressure measured
• Valve, head and line repairs
• Beds converted from spray to drip
• Controller programmed to Austin's watering days

From $450 for a full system audit and repair visit

Lighting is the cheapest thing you can do to a garden that changes how it feels. A few well-aimed uplights on a live oak do more than a row of fittings down a path, so that is usually where we start.

Everything is low-voltage and buried, the transformer is somewhere you will never look at it, and you get the timer on your phone rather than a dial in the garage.

• Low-voltage fittings, cable buried out of sight
• Tree uplighting and path lighting designed together
• Transformer sized with room to add later
• Timer and scenes you can change yourself

From $1,600 for a typical eight-fitting front-garden scheme