Vertical Gardens Services in Orinda, CA

“Sarah Ray and her design build firm are nothing short of exceptional. Sarah and her crew restored our trust in the home service industry after experiencing a botched home interior addition & remodel seven years ago. Our experience with Sarah now sets the gold standard for any home service provider we hire in the future. We spent a month carefully interviewing 6 landscape designers, architects, and design-build firms. Sarah was always the front runner and knew the second we hired her that we initiated a great partnership and were embarking on an awesome ride! And it was, on every front. Sarah is not only a talented visionary, designer and expert in her field, but a great listener, collaborator and partner. We have a large flat backyard (about 5000 sq. ft.) that was overgrown and neglected. We had ideas of the style and design elements that we liked, but it was overwhelming to think of how to get there! Having Sarah shepherd us through the design to build process was a privilege and an experience I will always treasure. She is extremely approachable, upbeat, patient, and easy to work with. She was very open to listening to our ideas and iterating on design options together. We also hired Sarah to build/implement our master design plan. A full design-build firm appealed to us because of the seamless and efficient implementation of the design. Sarah is also very available throughout the build process and was onsite nearly every day, as was her foreman. Sarah also met us countless times at various suppliers so that we could carefully select our materials. Her build crew is talented and very hard working. They started at 7:30am and worked for 7-8 hours/day, sweltering hot conditions or not. We really appreciated the undivided attention and the integrity and all-around work ethic displayed by Sarah and her crew. You will also find Sarah to be very transparent. Her billing system is the most logical and straight forward approach I have experienced in the home service industry. The invoice is directly tied to our contracted line items whereby charges reflect only percentages completed on a weekly basis. All change orders were at my request, and were only represented in the invoice if we agreed to it prior. There were no hidden costs or surprises. So, aside from my change orders, the project cost aligned with the signed contracted budget. Sarah created a gorgeous garden space that is everything we ever dreamed of and much more. Our family is looking forward to enjoying this beautiful extension of our home, our new found sanctuary, for years to come. Sarah Ray Design comes highly recommended for any size project. Thanks a million, Sarah!”

“Rafat was a pleasure to work with and is not only very knowledgeable but has wonderful taste in design. We are delighted with our garden.”

“David was amazing to work with! He was easy going and very open to our ideas for our small yard. He never made us feel like our wants were too much and worked with us to include all of our wishlist. He was able to design the whole property, and was very knowledgeable with the plants he recommended. We got the final copies of the plans in a timely manner and he was overall a pleasure to work with. He really made us feel like our small space was important to him!”

“I am a Landscape Contractor and have installed many of John's designs. His plans are detailed and easy to follow. He is one of the few Landscape Architects that designs to a budget. The client will know the construction costs prior to receiving my written proposal. I enjoy working with John and his staff. Very professional and talented One of the best custom residential Landscape Architectural firms in the East Bay.”

“I just completed a remodel of my pool and landscaping with the Alder Group, and simply stated I could not be happier. From the first meeting until the project was completed, Don always looked for ways to improve the project and at the same time ways to minimize the cost of the project. His keen eye for design saw needed simple improvements that were relatively inexpensive but had a massive effect on the overall beauty of the project. Perhaps most importantly when the manufacturer delivered the wrong custom coping, and I worried that we would not be able to meet the deadline of a large party that was planned for my backyard; Don found a way to resolve the issue and keep the job on schedule. Don is truly one of the good guys.”

“As many of you know Northern California is having its worst drought in pretty much ever. So in helping to conserve water, my hubby and I decided to remove our lawn while using the city of Napa's cash for grass incentive. The incentive pays you back $1 for each square foot of lawn you remove. I'd recommend looking into this in your own city to see whats available. With the lawn coming out we decided to take the opportunity to make some drastic changes to the exterior of our home including painting, lighting, new front door and of course landscaping. While choosing paint colors and fixtures is easy for me, designing a landscape is not. So I reached out to my FB friends and received a recommendation for Patrick Lannan Designs. After seeing his portfolio we were thrilled at the chance to work with someone so talented. Let me just say, from design to installation Patrick was a dream to work with. Not only is he a professional but he's also an excellent communicator and project coordinator. He and his team got the plantings in but also irrigation and lighting systems installed in the course of a weekend (take a look at the night time photos). One of the fun things of the process was walking through Flora Grubb with Patrick as our guide. This place is super cool! He showed us amazing plants and succulents that would work great in Napa. It's a lot warmer in Napa so it was important that the selections matched our climate. As you can see from the photos our project turned out to be pretty amazing. Patricks keen eye for color, shape and detail helped to take our boring beige house and turn into the jewel of the neighborhood. If you're not sure what to do with your landscaping I'd highly recommend reaching out to Patrick.”

“Ferdi Castillo is an amazing talent with landscape design, who also happens to be kind, warm and funny too. A delight to work with and I couldn't be happier with the finished product. Our home has a very difficult site, a huge elevation gain/drop, limited space, just a weird, bizarre site. What he created surpassed anything I could ever come up with and he was very flexible with our limited budget. We now are using our space so much more efficiently than ever before. He is so easy to talk to and work with, we were sad when our project ended with him. I would absolutely recommend him. Friends of ours, neighbors, etc. come over and notice our big changes and ask who the genius is behind it: Ferdi Castillo. Hire him, your yard (and family) will thank you!”

“Luis and his team are top notch professionals who focus on quality. I have had the good fortune to work with him on several projects to improve my home and backyard in San Francisco. The first was a fairly complicated deck rebuild followed by my request to build a series of planters from an architect's drawings. They did such a great job on those I asked them to replace all my exterior siding and even add a window which looks marvelous. I can't recommend Form and Function Landscapes enough. My experience with Luis is he has always been fair and honest. I know I can trust him and his team of landscapers, carpenters, plumbers and electricians to do a good job.”

“We worked with Keith this last winter to redo essentially all of the yard space for our suburban home. This included front (yard, walkways, driveway), back (yard, patio), sides (planter boxes, walkways). We're very happy with not just the results, but the experience of working with Keith. Our house is an Eichler, so we were looking for a modern aesthetic in the design phase. Both Keith and designer Charlie Loy worked on preliminary design iterations. We worked with Keith directly as the design finalized, through the inevitable tradeoffs between features & budget. Through the build process, Keith was creative, flexible, and unflappable in making design and build adjustments due to complications (tree overhang required fire put to move, which meant the layout of some key benches and walls had to move, Keith worked out a new design immediately) and opportunities (turning some reclaimed boulders and river rocks into a water-less water feature). Budget and schedule: Our budget was around $100K, and we were able to stick pretty close to it, by changing some design elements so that the final design was at budget. Once we were in the build phase, both budget and schedule went without a hitch. Of course there were delays, but Keith and Cesar, his foreman, kept us informed, and worked around delays (inspections, parts not showing up) as much as they could. The whole crew was professional and thoughtful throughout the process -remember when we had those big storms in Nov /Dec - they made sure that even tho the yard was a muddy mess, we had clear access to the house. In the end, we're very very happy, and I would whole-heartedly recommend Keith Willig. Our new landscaping is not only beautiful, its 10X more usable! Keith & co were able to unlock parts of the property that we didn't even think about, and make them great.”

“Past the Gate did a beautiful job with a new patio I purchased as a gift for my daughter at her home. Greg and his staff were friendly and very professional and I would use them again in an instant (in fact, I have now used them two years in a row for improvements to my daughter's property in Berkeley!)”