Hardscape Design & Build
Patios, Walls, Walkways, and Natural Stone
What hardscape actually means
Hardscape is everything in a landscape that isn't alive. Stone, block, pavers, gravel, timber, and the structures built from them. Patios, walkways, driveways, retaining walls, steps, fire pits, seating walls.
The living part is plantings, beds, trees, and lawn. Most properties need both and they should be drawn at the same time by the same person, which is how we do it.
Hardscape is the part that costs more, lasts longer, and is far more expensive to fix. That's why it's worth understanding how it's built before you sign anything.
Get in touch about your hardscape project
What we build
Patios
Goshen stone, bluestone, pavers, and permeable pavers. We handle all types of patios, from a small sitting area off a back door to a terraced entertaining space cut into a slope. Fire pits, fireplaces, and seating walls get built as part of the same job rather than added later.
Walkways & Paver Driveways
Same base, same edging restraints, same polymeric sand as a patio. A walkway is the part of a property people put their feet on every day, so a soft joint or a bad edge shows up there before anywhere else. There's a paver driveway we put in on Franklin Street in Northampton in 2012 that's still flat.
Retaining Walls
Block, natural stone, and boulder. A typical retaining wall project for us runs three to four feet. Anything taller usually gets tiered rather than built as one wall, and every wall we build has drainage and landscape cloth behind it.
Natural Stone & Boulder Work
Goshen stone, bluestone, fieldstone, boulder. This is the slowest and most expensive way to build, and it's the work Larry likes most. We run a hydraulic grapple that rotates a full 360 degrees, which is how a two-ton boulder ends up where the drawing put it rather than near enough.
The base is the job
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. 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. The depth is set by your soil condition, not by a spec sheet, which is why the number is a range and not a promise.
Then an inch of bedding sand. Then the pavers or the stone. Then polymeric sand swept into every joint, so the joints bind and ants can't burrow underneath and undermine the field.
Polymeric sand breaks down over the years and needs redoing. We'll tell you that at the walkthrough instead of letting you discover it.
Skip the edging restraints, and here's what happens, in order. 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.
Go back to the other bids you're holding. Ask how deep the base goes and what's in it. It's a fair question; it takes one sentence to answer if the answer is good, and it will tell you more than the rest of the quote put together.
Choosing a material
| Material | Cost | Working it | Maintenance | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Goshen Stone | $$$ | Quarried locally. Harder to cut and slower to set than anything else we work with. | Very Low | A patio that looks like it belongs in Western Mass |
| Bluestone | $$$ | Cuts cleaner than Goshen and lays more uniform. | Very Low | A flatter, more formal surface |
| Pavers | $$ | Fastest to install. Widest range of colour, shape and pattern. | Polymeric sand needs redoing over the years | Most patios, most walkways, most driveways |
| Permeable Pavers | $$$ | Same surface, different base build-up. Water goes through instead of running off. | Joints need clearing to keep draining | Runoff problems, or a site with coverage limits |
| Fieldstone & Boulder | varies | Set with the grapple. Slowest of everything. | Very Low | Walls, steps, and anything meant to look like it grew there |
Water is part of the hardscape, not a seperate trade
Most hardscape failures we get called out to fix are water problems wearing a stone costume.
A patio that heaves. A wall that bellies out. A walkway that drops at one end. Underneath all three is usually water that had nowhere to go.
So every wall we build has drainage behind it and landscape cloth separating the stone from the soil. Every patio gets pitched to carry water off it, and we check that pitch with a laser level rather than by eye.
If the yard around the patio has a water problem of its own, we fix that too. French drains, curtain drains, dry wells, catch basins and pipe, downspout extensions, swales, regrading. Same excavator, same crew, same job.
We don't do wetlands work or Conservation Commission permitting. If that's what your site needs, we'll tell you who does.
Two things that separate a wall from a good wall
A typical wall for us is three to four feet. When the grade asks for more, we usually tier it into two shorter walls instead of building one tall one. Most people don't want a five-foot drop in the middle of the yard, and they don't want a railing either.
Drainage ports. Done right, the block is cut to fit around the pipe, and there's a grate on the end so animals can't get in and build a nest. Done wrong, somebody leaves a block out and shoves a pipe through the hole. Larry was on a property recently and asked who built the wall. The homeowner said he wasn't the first person to point it out.
Rocking the edge. The exposed end of a block wall is a saw cut unless somebody finishes it. Rocking that edge takes extra time, and it's the difference between a wall and a wall that somebody built on purpose.
The tallest we've built is twelve feet, in Goshen stone.
How to compare hardscape bids
You're probably holding two or three quotes that all say quality craftsmanship. Here are the questions that actually separate them, and our answers, so you've got something to hold the others against.
- How deep is the base and what's in it? Eight to ten inches of dense grade stone, then an inch of bedding sand.
- Do you install edging restraints? Always. No exceptions.
- What happens to the water behind a wall? Drainage and landscape cloth every time, with the base at least a foot deep and deeper as the wall goes up.
- Who designs it, and who's on site? Larry designs every project himself. Three crews of two build it. He's on the property before the crew and again at the end.
- What's your insurance? Two million dollars in general liability. Ask, and we'll send the certificate.
- What's the warranty? One year on plantings and on workmanship.
- How far out are you booking? Small jobs four to six weeks. Large builds with a design phase, usually a season.
If a contractor can't answer the first two without going to check, that's an answer.
What the process looks like
Design-build projects start around $5,000. The reason is arithmetic. Any day heavy equipment is on your property, that's $2,500 before anybody sets a stone.
Hardscape travels further than our other work, because once a project is large enough the drive stops mattering. Northampton, Hadley, Amherst, Williamsburg, Deerfield, South Deerfield, Easthampton, Huntington, Pelham, Belchertown, Conway, and Goshen, plus the Berkshires, Lenox, and Chesterfield when the job justifies moving the equipment.
The shop is at 83 State Road in Whately, which is about as close to South Deerfield as it is to anywhere.
Take back your weekend
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.
One Call is All it Takes for Your Reliable Trusted Handyman
Questions we get about hardscape
Eight to ten inches of dense grade stone, set by the soil rather than a spec sheet, then an inch of bedding sand. Plenty of installers use four inches. The patio looks identical for the first few years. After that it doesn't.
A graded mix carrying everything from three-quarter-inch stone down to fines. The fines fill the voids between the larger stone, which is what lets the base compact and hold. Clean stone with no fines in it won't lock up the same way.
Pavers if you want the widest range of looks for the money and don't mind refreshing joint sand every few years. Goshen stone if you want something quarried twenty minutes from here that will still look right in thirty years. Goshen costs more and takes longer to set, and both of those are real.
It depends on the height and the town, and it's a question for your building department rather than your contractor. We'll tell you when we think you need to make that call.
Almost always the base, the drainage, or both. Too little stone underneath, no edging restraints holding the field together, or water moving through ground that had no way to shed it. All three are fixable and none of them are cheap, which is the argument for getting it right the first time.
About $5,000. Heavy equipment costs at least $2,500 a day to have on site, so below that we can't build it properly.
Autumn. Design takes three or four weeks on anything sizeable and the build schedule fills from there. Calling in May for a June patio generally means next season.