We are very lucky to have on our team a group of highly motivated and multi-talented individuals. In addition to our office manager, we employ a landscape architect and two 4 to 5 person construction crews. They are experienced, efficient and do work of the highest quality, while keeping project costs consistently within estimates and budget. They are friendly, well mannered and non-intrusive.
Almost all of the construction work is performed by our own crews. For specialties such as line voltage electrical work, certain concrete finishes, and ironwork, we employ experienced subcontractors whose work we know well from many mutual projects. All are competitively priced, state-licensed, bonded, and insured.
David Leafhopper is our Lead Foreman, and Head of Construction. David, with a BS degree in Ornamental Horticulture from Calif. Polytechnic Institute, Pomona in 1979, has 25 years of experience in landscape construction, 8 of those years with our company. In addition he has had a C-27 landscape contractor license since 2004. His strengths are in detailed project layout and planning and client communication. He is a model of on-site creativity and hard work for our crew members, who greatly respect him. While his interest in environmental horticulture and plant design never seems to wane, David is an avid backpacker, enthusiastic about nature in the wilderness, as well as “downstream”, in our cities.
Chris Wettersten is our Second Foreman. Chris has been with our company for over 10 years, and, while talented in many areas, his expertise and interest is in working with stone. He is a highly skilled stonemason, heads up our stonemasonry crew, and is responsible for many of our award winning projects in stone. His ability to pass on the special skills of this ancient art is what has attracted many of our crew to sign on with the company. He is also an artist in other media, most notably as a metal sculptor, working particularly with kinetic sculpture, sometimes with fire art components. His works have been featured in local art shows and galleries, and he has constructed a number of significant installations for the Burning Man festival held annually in the Black Rock desert near Gerlach, Nevada. In addition, he has a passion for 20th century military history, and historical reenactment. He has appeared in programs on the History Channel five times to date, acting in historical episodes, and assisting on them as a WWII period consultant.
Paige Thomas, our extremely capable office manager, is a relatively new addition to our team, but we project she has a long future here. Familiar with the particular challenges of organizing creative people, she has worked as a sound engineer at various venues around the Bay Area, as the office manager for a lighting design company, and most recently a web design company, managing their office and performing daily accounting tasks. In her spare time, Paige is a metalsmith, creating both small metal sculptures and jewelry.
Sarah Gronquist, landscape architect and co-designer with Chris, majored in art history and studio art at Wellesley College. After achieving her BA with honors, she spent one year in Florence, Italy, concentrating on foundry arts and bronze sculpture. She worked 3 years with our company as designer assistant before leaving to do a Masters Degree in Landscape Architecture at the University of Massachusetts, where she received the Rhoades Award for Outstanding Academic Achievement and the BSLA Award for the Chicopee River Study. Sarah has worked with a number of Bay Area landscape architects, as Project Manager, CAD Manager and Project Designer, and has been licensed in California since 2004. We were delighted to welcome Sarah back in 2006, to continue our working association. She is a great communicator. This is especially helpful in dealing with sometimes-difficult city and county design review and permit issues, if and when they arise.
Wendy Wilde, plant designer, has worked for many years in the world of horticulture. After studying at UC Berkeley, she became a teacher of Spanish language and literature, but her love of nature and plants eventually changed her future. She was hired by the City of Berkeley Parks and Recreation Dept in 1971 and attained a degree in Horticulture from Merritt College. She then formed “Wildewood Gardens”, in partnership with a landscape architect, and together they designed and installed gardens. Their developing business flourished, enabling the addition of nurseries in Napa that supplied stock for many Bay Area nurseries. Wendy’s impressive resume includes articles in Sunset Magazine 1994, Better Homes and Gardens 1992, 1993 and 1996 and the San Francisco Chronicle’s Garden section 1994. Her horticultural experience and knowledge is unparalleled locally, as she applies her creativity and passion with plants to her work.
