Yards in Granite Falls deserve better than mow-and-go.

"We interviewed three landscape companies — including a bigger Twin Cities firm Cal used to work for. Cal won on the first visit by spending 90 minutes walking the property with us, asking what we did out there in the morning, what the light was like in August. The plan that came back two weeks later wasn't a sales doc, it was a real design. We still have the planting plan she drew on her iPad during that first visit."

"Bluestone patio with a stacked Kasota stone fire pit. The work was clean — base prep was done correctly, joints swept twice with polymeric, edges hand-cut where the cut shows. Three winters in and there's not a heaved stone on the patio. Cal didn't oversell; he talked us out of a larger patio because the smaller footprint left room for the perennial border we actually use more."

"Lake Redwood property. We bought the place because we love the water and inherited a yard full of arborvitae and yew that fought the whole landscape. Granite Yard designed a three-year plan: year one was the shoreline restoration and the prairie border up by the road. Year two was the perennial garden and the path system. We just signed off on year three. Erin's planting plan is the document that made the property a place we want to be every weekend."

"Native pollinator garden, about 600 square feet replacing a strip of fescue that never looked right. Cal sized it correctly the first time — most of the garden centers want to sell you a 'pollinator pack' the size of a doormat. This is a real garden. Six visits from a tagged monarch already this summer."

"We hired a cheaper landscaper first. Eighteen months in we had a patio that heaved, perennials that didn't survive the first winter, and a 'plan' that was a Google Doc. We came back to Granite Yard for the redo. Cal was kind about it; Erin re-planned the entire planting with Zone 4 plants that actually belong here. Three years later the patio is dead flat and the smooth hydrangeas read like they've been there a decade. Worth the second go-around."

"Fifteen acres west of town. We wanted to convert the back ten from soybean field to prairie. Granite Yard did the site prep over an entire growing season — proper kill of the existing weed seed bank — then drilled a custom seed mix Erin built around big bluestem, prairie dropseed, smooth aster, joe pye weed, butterfly weed, and twelve other species. Year three the prairie reads like prairie. Year five it's going to be remarkable."