Landscape design, build and care in Vista, California

The water bill answered the question for us

We had 1,900 square feet of dying fescue in the front and a bill that hit $340 in August. Marcus walked the property, pulled the current rebate terms for our Vista Irrigation District account, and told us straight that the rebate would cover maybe a fifth of the job so we should not decide based on that. They solarized the Bermuda for six weeks before planting, which I was impatient about at the time and am now grateful for, because there is not a single blade coming back. This July our bill was $118. The front is mostly Cleveland sage, westringia and two olive trees, and in April it was covered in bees.

They showed me the base before it disappeared

Three bids on a 740 square foot paver patio and a 40 foot seat wall, and the numbers were $19k, $27k and $34k. Coastal Sage was the middle one. The difference, which I only understood after asking, was base depth. The cheap bid was four inches with no fabric on straight clay. Diego texted me photos of the compacted base at each lift and had me come out and look before the pavers went down. Two winters in and it is dead flat with no settling at the wall.

Found in twenty minutes what two companies missed

Water bill had roughly doubled with nothing visible. Two other companies replaced heads and told me it was normal summer usage. Kevin ran the meter test in my driveway inside ten minutes, confirmed a leak on the system, then traced it to a cracked lateral under the side yard where a root had lifted it. Repaired the same visit. He also found that half my back zone was rotors mixed with sprays, which explained why one side was always soggy. Not once did anyone try to sell me a whole new system.

The plan is what we paid for and it was worth it

We paid $2,400 for the design and honestly resented it until we saw it. Hannah spent an entire morning measuring and probing soil, then came back with a plan that solved a drainage problem we did not know we had and moved the patio nine feet to where the afternoon shade actually falls. We phased it across fourteen months. Everything buried went in during phase one, exactly as she said it would, and phase two did not disturb a thing.

The night demo sold it

I was ready to spend maybe three thousand. They came out after dark with temporary fixtures and set up the whole thing so we could stand in the yard and look at it. Two of the positions I was sure about looked terrible, and one I never would have chosen, moonlighting down through the pepper tree, is now the reason we sit outside. Ended up at $6,800 and I would do it again. Came back a week after installing to re-aim everything at night.

Honest about what we did not need

We asked for a full tear-out. Marcus talked us out of about half of it. He said the bones were fine, the problem was that everything had been sheared into meatballs for a decade and the irrigation was fighting itself. They renovated rather than replaced, restructured the pruning over two seasons, and redid the irrigation properly. Saved us somewhere north of twenty thousand dollars by telling us not to spend it.