Los Gatos

Los Gatos has the steepest lots we work on regularly, and slope is what drives the job. A hillside yard that looks unusable is almost always a terracing problem: two or three retaining walls at the right heights turn a bank nobody walks on into level ground you can plant, pave, or put a table on.

We build those walls the way they need to be built for a hillside, with a poured reinforced footing, grouted block, gravel backfill, and a perforated drain that carries winter water to daylight instead of letting it push on the back of the wall. Then we face them in stone veneer or stucco so the structure reads as landscape.

Los Gatos properties also tend to have old, valuable trees. Our pruning here is structural rather than cosmetic: deadwood out, crossing limbs cleared, canopy lifted at proper cuts, never topped.