Full yard design and installation by the crew that builds it. Beds, planting, stone, drainage and irrigation, from an office 8 minutes from downtown Boerne.
There are two kinds of company in this market. One draws a plan and hands it to somebody else to build. The other shows up with a mower and offers to put in a few plants. We do neither. The person who walks your yard and lays out the beds is the person whose crew will be standing in it three weeks later, and that changes what gets drawn.
It means the plan does not contain a plant that will not survive at your address, because the person drawing it has replaced that plant for somebody else already. It means the grade and the drainage get solved as part of the design instead of discovered on day two. And it means when something on site turns out different from the plan, which happens on most jobs, the decision gets made by somebody who understands the whole design rather than by whoever is holding the shovel.
We have been doing this since January 2019, we are BBB accredited, and 74 homeowners have rated us 5.0 on Google.
No charge, no salesperson. We look at where water goes in a hard rain, how much sun each area really gets across a day, what the soil does when you cut into it, what the deer have already eaten, and what you actually use the yard for. Most of the useful information comes from what has already failed.
A plan you can see, with beds, plant locations and materials. We size plants at mature width rather than at nursery size, which is why our plans look sparse on paper and correct in three years. If your neighbourhood has an architectural committee, the plan is built to what it allows and comes with what you need to submit.
Written, itemised, and honest about what is a range rather than a fixed price. If your budget is set, tell us on the first visit. We would far rather design one phase properly than a whole yard you have to cut in half.
Order of operations matters and it is always the same: demolition, then drainage and grade, then irrigation, then hardscape, then soil, then planting, then mulch, then lighting. Doing planting before drainage is how people end up paying twice.
We walk it with you, set the irrigation controller for your address and your current drought stage, and hand you a written watering schedule for the establishment period. Then we come back and look at it.
Thin topsoil on limestone and caliche, pH usually 7.5 to 8.2, rock at 4 to 8 inches on plenty of lots. That rules out a long list of plants sold at big box stores, and it means beds get built up with imported soil rather than dug down into something that is not there.
In Boerne and Fair Oaks Ranch they are not seasonal and they are not shy. A design that ignores them is a design that gets eaten in October. Everything in an unfenced bed has to be on the list or protected.
SAWS and the City of Boerne both restrict landscape watering to one day a week in the stages they have been sitting in. A planting plan that needs more than that is a plan that looks bad by August, so plant selection and drip zoning are designed to the actual rule at your address.
Mature live oaks make deep shade that moves through the day and the year. We map it before we place a single plant, because the difference between 3 hours of sun and 5 is the difference between two entirely different plant lists.
Limestone does not absorb. A 3 inch rain sheets across the surface and takes mulch with it. Beds get edged and graded so they hold, and the runoff gets a route before the planting goes in.
We ask what you are willing to do yourself. A design that assumes weekly deadheading, given to somebody who wants to look at it from the kitchen window, is a bad design no matter how it looks on paper.
This is not a catalogue. It is the short list we come back to because it survives alkaline soil, one day a week watering and a doe in October.
Structure and evergreen: dwarf yaupon holly, rosemary, Texas sage, agarita, Texas mountain laurel, sotol, and where there is room, a Texas persimmon.
Colour that keeps going: salvia greggii in several colours, esperanza, lantana, flame acanthus, blackfoot daisy, damianita, and skullcap for edges.
Grasses and texture: Mexican feather grass, gulf muhly for the pink haze in autumn, big muhly, bamboo muhly in part shade.
Accents: agave, yucca, sotol and prickly pear where they will not be brushed against, and where the design wants something architectural rather than soft.
Trees: live oak, cedar elm, Texas red oak, Mexican white oak, desert willow and Texas mountain laurel. We plant them high, with the root flare visible, because a tree set at the depth of the nursery pot on a caliche lot is sitting in a bathtub.
Things we will talk you out of in an unfenced Boerne bed: hostas, most hybrid roses, young Japanese maples, hydrangeas, azaleas, and anything acid loving that will spend its life yellow.
Typical ranges, not a quote. Design and installation is the hardest service to price on a web page because the word covers a bed refresh and a whole property. Here is how it actually breaks down.
What actually moves the number, in order: how much hardscape there is, how much soil has to come in, whether drainage has to be solved first, access to the back yard, and plant size at installation. That last one is worth a sentence. Buying larger plants gets you a finished look sooner and costs a great deal more, and in this climate smaller plants frequently overtake larger ones within two seasons because they establish better. We will tell you where spending more on size is worth it and where it is not.
The estimate is free, and we do not send a salesperson.
The first visit and the estimate are free. For a full property design with drawings we will tell you up front if there is a design fee and what it is, and it is credited against the installation if you build with us.
A bed refresh is a day or two. A front yard with hardscape is usually one to two weeks. A whole property with drainage and irrigation runs longer, and we give you a sequence before we start so you know which week is which.
Yes, and for a lot of properties it is the right answer. The one rule is that drainage, grade and irrigation come first, even if the visible parts wait. Those are the things that are expensive to retrofit.
Autumn is the best planting window in this climate by a wide margin. Roots grow through a mild winter and the plant faces its first summer already established. Spring is the second best. We plant in summer when the schedule demands it, but it costs more in water and loses more plants.
Yes. Several of the larger subdivisions north and west of Boerne have architectural review. We build the plan to what the committee allows and give you what you need to submit before we dig.
Warranty terms are stated on the estimate. What we will say here is that the honest determinant of whether a plant lives is whether it was right for the spot and whether it got water in the first season, and we design and hand off with both of those in mind.
We are a design and installation company, not a maintenance company. We do property clean-ups and bed renovation, and we come back to look at what we installed, but we do not mow.
Yes, and our licensed irrigator checks and adjusts it as part of the job. New beds usually need the zone changed from spray to drip, and that is part of the design rather than an afterthought.
Limestone borders, seat walls, steps and stone.
Solved before the planting, not after.
The last layer, and the one people notice.
No charge and no salesperson. Someone comes out, looks at the yard, and tells you what it needs. We work in Boerne, Fair Oaks Ranch, Helotes and northwest San Antonio, Monday to Friday from 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM.
28991 IH-10 W, Suite 104, Boerne, TX 78006
travislandscapingtx@gmail.com
