Reclaimed

This one started as a property cleanup. A century home in Grey Highlands and the place needed work. Areas overgrown, weedy, neglected. Grading issues that were sending water the wrong direction. A large overgrown cedar hedge that was eating the yard alive.

This is where my landscape background came in. It wasn't just about building something — it was about reading the whole property, fixing what was wrong underneath and then creating something on top of it that actually worked.

Once the site was sorted, I brought in the biggest, roughest quarry flagstone I could find. Raw edges, irregular shapes — exactly what the homeowner had in mind. The patio came together off the back door of the house. I used stepstones to tie the house, deck, driveway and garage entries into one flowing circuit.

The drystone wall wasn't even in the original plan. It came later — built from stone pulled off an old barn foundation on the property. Once the cedars came out, the space opened up in a way nobody expected. The wall went in as a defining edge. And with the cedars gone, an apple tree that had been buried in the mess finally had room to breathe. My wife pruned it up properly and we put lighting on it. It looked fantastic at night.

They loved the wall so much they called me back in the fall to build sixty more feet of it into the winter — this time along the property line between their yard and the farm field next door. Drystone on one side, crops blowing in the fall on the other. It's one of those combinations that looks better than anything you could plan on paper.