Owner-Led Landscaping and Hardscape Design-Build Since 2007
Dependability & Confidence
Skilled Craftsmanship
Honest & Open Rates
We're Not A Lawn Company
That's blunter than most contractors would put it, and it's the most useful thing to know about us up front.
Beyond Landscaping is a design-build and hardscape contractor. We move earth, set stone, solve water problems, and put in the plantings that go around all of it. We also run a property care program for the clients whose work we built, because somebody has to keep it right.
If what you want is a company to mow every Thursday, there are good ones around here, and we aren't one of them.
Our History Proves Our Worth
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Our Priority is Customer Satisfaction
Our Services
Landscape Design
Hardscaping Services
Garden Design
Property Maintenance
Total Quality Care
Snow Removal
What we build
Paver & Natural Stone Patios
Walkways & Paver Driveways
Retaining Walls
Natural Stone & Boulder Work
Most patios around here fail from below.
Other companies will try to get away with a four-inch base and an inch of bedding sand. We've seen them skip the paver edging restraints entirely. That's a good way to save money and a terrible way to build a walkway.
We run eight to ten inches of dense grade stone, depending on the soil. Dense grade has everything in it from three-quarter-inch stone down to fines, and the fines are what let it compact and stay compacted. Then an inch of bedding sand. Then the pavers. Then polymeric sand is swept into every joint, so the joints bind and ants can't burrow underneath and undermine the field.
Skip the edging restraints and here's the sequence you get. The pavers separate. The gaps fill with dirt. Plants germinate in the dirt and push the pavers further apart. Then it accelerates.
The difference between a four-inch base and a ten-inch base is about a decade.
Ask whoever else is bidding your project how deep their base goes and what they're putting in it. It's a fair question; it's an easy one to answer if the answer is good, and it tells you most of what you need to know.
A wet yard usually shows up in one of three ways. It feels spongy underfoot. Grass grows a lot taller in one strip than everywhere else. Or it goes the other direction: there's so much water the grass drowns, and you get a dead patch.
We do French drains, curtain drains, dry wells, catch basins and pipes, downspout extensions, swales, regrading, foundation drainage, and sump discharge lines. All in-house, with our own excavator, and we check pitch with a laser level rather than by eye.
Here's the mistake we get called out to fix. People like to dig a ditch, fill it with stone, and expect it to work. It doesn't work that way. It might for a while, and then it stops. A French drain has to be lined with filter fabric, or soil migrates into the stone, the voids silt up, and you've buried an expensive nothing.
Sometimes somebody calls about water in the basement and the real answer is a downspout extension. Get the water four or five feet away from the house, and it makes a huge difference. We'll tell you that on the phone and not charge you for it.
Drainage work generally runs $3,500 to $10,000. We don't do wetlands work or Conservation Commission permitting, and if that's what your project needs, we'll tell you who does.
Design-build projects start around $5,000. The reason is arithmetic, not policy. Anytime heavy equipment is on site, that's $2,500 a day before anybody has laid a stone.
Drainage starts at $3,500 unless we're already on your property for something else. Garden and planting work starts at $1,200, because between the plants, the soil, the mulch, and the delivery, there isn't a way to do it right for less than that.
Small jobs generally schedule four to six weeks out. Large projects with a design phase run longer. If you want to be building next season, now is when the drawing gets started.
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One program, not a menu of tiers. We price everything your property needs for the year, divide it by twelve, and that's your bill every month. Most properties land between $600 and $1,200/mo.
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Frequently Asked Questions
We run eight to ten inches of dense grade stone, set by the soil condition rather than by a spec sheet, then an inch of bedding sand. A lot of installers use four inches. The patio looks the same for the first few years. After that it doesn't.
Nine times out of ten, no filter fabric. Stone in a trench with soil against it fills in from the sides, the voids close up, and the drain quits. Filter fabric keeps the soil out of the stone and it costs almost nothing to install at the time.
No. Snow is Northampton and South Deerfield only. We do maintenance in Amherst, Hadley, and Deerfield year-round, but plowing is those two towns.
$1,200, credited toward the project if you build it. You get a 3D rendering, and on a bigger project two or three meetings across three or four weeks before we break ground.
About $5,000 for design-build, $3,500 for drainage, $1,200 for garden and planting work. Heavy equipment costs at least $2,500 a day to have on site, so below those numbers, we can't do the job properly, and neither can anyone else.
Small jobs go out four to six weeks. Larger builds with a design phase are usually a season ahead, and on new construction we're often waiting on other trades. If you want stone in the ground next spring, call in the fall.