Backyard Landscaping

This is a residential backyard landscape we have been working on this month.


The picture on the left is during construction of the Vanishing Waterfall.
Notice the clock on the fence. We found it buried in the dirt during excavation. 


This project was designed by Jan Nelson.
Jan referred us to her client for this project. 

This project features a well selected list of plants, a Filtrific Vanishing Waterfall, an artificial turf lawn and some basic landscape lighting.

Filtrific Waterfall Construction

Almaden Waterfall

Award Winning Water Feature

We just found out that a project we worked on with Baxter Landscaping won a 2nd place award from the California Landscape Contractors Association.

 Our part of the project was to construct a large, natural looking Pondless Waterfall as a part of a larger project that included many contemporary and unique landscape features. With a Bocci Ball court, a Redwood Pergola, and extensive Paver pathways and patios, this project was exciting to be a part of.

I would like to thank Baxter Landscaping for letting us be a part of this awesome project.




We look forward to working on more projects with Baxter and other Landscape contractors in Santa Cruz County. 

Custom Potting Bench

We have had a busy May, mostly doing wood work.
We are just finishing up a project in San Jose that had a potting bench in the design.

We went back and forth with our client considering what style of bench we would install.

At first we discussed the option of buying one online and assembling it on site.


But after looking around and reading reviews, we decided a custom bench would work better and last longer.

So we decided to create a simple bench that was purely functional. There were a few requirements we were working with: 
We wanted a drawer for hand tools, a cabinet for fertilizers, a drop down cabinet for soils and a waterproof bench to keep the soils dry.

So we came up with a simple drawing and gave it to our client. After looking it over and seeing the rest of the yard come together so beautifully, (see the post on 'Relaxing Koi Pond') we decided to make the potting bench both functional and beautiful.


We redesigned it and started building in our shop.


We used hand picked select heart Redwood for the framework and the bench. The bench was constructed in a 'cutting board' style.

We used a nice bright Pine for the face of the cabinets and drawer.


This gave a wonderful contrast to the Redwood.


As I mentioned above, we installed a drawer for small hand tools, a cabinet for fertilizers and other plant food, a drop down cabinet for potting soils and two shelves for pots.


The bench was then sealed with Poly-urethane, delivered to the job site and assembled.

Asheville landscaping: Koi Pond Construction

Koi Pond San Jose

Although the majority of landscaping we do is in the Santa Cruz area, we just finished constructing an incredible Koi pond in San Jose. It features a nice simple waterfall, two 1/4 horse power pumps, a UV filter and a pressurized bead filter.

One pump feeds the filter from the bottom drain, the other pump feeds two mid-water return jets from the skimmer. The desire of our client was to have a more appropriate space for her koi & a pond that would require less pond maintenance.

Seeing a beautiful water landscape when we're done is one of our favorite parts of pond construction. 

I will post some project pics later.

Enjoy.