We highly recommend Mark/Impressions Landscape! We contracted with Mark to have Impressions convert our boring grass backyard into a scenic mountain-scape area including a canyon-style pond-less waterfall with an adjacent gas fire pit patio, planting beds running the perimeter of the property, and a paver walkway connecting our driveway out front through to a back patio. We absolutely love the results!
Mark deals with several types of clients - if you’re the type that just wants to provide him some high-level wants, let him use his creative genius, and write him a check, read no further as I’m sure you’ll love the results. If you have a very specific vision in mind, it may be worth reading on about our experience to better understand what to expect.
We received bids from several landscaping companies and initially planned to go with another as Impressions’ bid came in higher than most of the others. We let Mark know we were going to pass on Impressions, and he kindly inquired as to why - at that point in time we had a better understanding of what kind of a waterfall (i.e., a very basic one) we’d be getting with the competing bids, but we had assumed Mark was bidding the same type of waterfall. Mark subsequently sent several photos of other projects of his with spectacular waterfalls and our jaws dropped when he said that he had bid something similar to what was in these photos (clearly a much higher class of waterfall than we had assumed) - we instantly signed-on with him. On a side note, you really should check out his portfolio!
No project goes completely according to plan, but I wanted to share this experience of what *could* have been a very frustrating outcome… We had created a landscape plan that - among other things - assumed a very specific placement of the waterfall to ensure it’d leave enough space for a circular fire pit patio of a specific size that was space-constrained due to an existing mature tree in the yard. During the excavation work, the crew dug and placed the water reservoir such that it precluded us from being able to proceed with the originally envisioned fire pit patio plan (where the reservoir is placed will dictate where the waterfall ends, and in this case, it didn’t leave us enough space between it and the existing tree for the planned patio)… we were understandably distressed, *BUT* Mark did a fantastic job working with us on a revised fire pit patio design that ended up *SO MUCH BETTER* than what we had originally planned - so what started as a significant problem for us ended up working out for the better! This goes back to what I said earlier about whether you’re the write-a-check-and-let-him-do-his-thing type, or the actively-engaged OCD type… if we were the former, we would’ve only seen the end result of the project and loved it; but being the latter, while enduring some transient distress, we also saw Mark’s commitment to perfection/ensuring we would be happy with the outcome.
If - like us - you do want to take a very active role in the overall design/project, you should make yourself available through the process and be sure to maintain an open line of communication with Mark. Mark was more than willing to accommodate my OCD nature and he always struck a great balance between him driving vs periodically handing me the reins on things where he understood that I was being particularly persnickety and he couldn’t be expected to completely read my mind.
Over the course of the project, it became clear to us that Mark truly cares about the quality of his work and is a very artistic individual who has been designing and implementing landscapes for decades. Any questions or concerns we had along the way, he was quick to respond and take any action if ever needed. When we settled the bill at the end, he didn’t hit us with any unexpected expenses. Over the 1-2 month project, we got to know many of his crew and they were all very nice, respectful, hardworking individuals - a special shout out to Antonio!
Again, highly recommended!