Matt Hornby Garden Design And Construction

Matt Hornby and his plant expert, Martina, created a fabulous front yard for us. Matt and all of his employees who worked on our project were skilled, talented, and all-around nice people. I absolutely LOVE my front yard and I often see people stop to admire it. Each time I'm out there, at least one passerby stops to compliment the landscaping.

Matt added depth, height, and a very natural look to our plain flat space. The way he incorporated "moss rocks" and created hills makes it look like it's been that way forever. He listened to what we envisioned for paths, shared options, costs, and advice about different materials, and installed paths that are just perfect.

Martina listened to what we liked in plants (specific plant requests as well as color preferences, textures, etc.) and her choice and placement of the plants in our space is just artistic. It really does take someone knowledgeable and talented to choose appropriate plants (drought tolerant, deer resistant, butterfly attracting, colorful, beautiful, hearty, etc) and lay them out until they are in just the right places to then be planted.

We've had our yard in place now for just over a year. I absolutely love watching the changes in each plant and in the landscape as a whole as the yard fills in.

Many landscape contractors I contacted immediately responded that our project was "too small" for them or couldn't be done with our budget. But to US it wasn't a small project! Matt Hornby was willing to take a look, listen to what we wanted, and let us know what amount it would realistically take to create our front yard. He was great at keeping to our budget, letting us know if new requests we made would add expense and how much it would be so we could make an informed decision. The project got done in a small amount of time and we have been thrilled with his (and his team's) work every day since.

We are very much do-it-yourselfers, but we could never have created a front yard as lovely as Matt Hornby created for us. I'm very happy we hired someone for this project, and I'm very happy it was Matt Hornby we chose.

I enthusiastically recommend Matt Hornby for landscaping, particularly developing a plan for an underutilized yard. Last year, I interviewed several firms to re-landscape our back yard and initially didn't hire Matt because he felt that he could not accomplish all that we hoped for within our budget. We went with someone else, who then came back with a bid that did not meet our goals AND was twice what we could pay. So I went back to Matt, impressed by his honesty.

Together, we came up with a plan that did fit within our budget and met all of our goals. He went way above the call of duty--finding us a micro-sized play structure that we could squeeze into our tiny lawn, wading through mud and rain to get the contours of the yard just right, and carefully preserving a large arbor that was original to the house. In the end he installed hardscaping, put in irrigation, plus worked with a plant specialist to pick out flowers that have proved hardy and low maintenance.

Our yard is now a magical place, which gets comments from everyone who visits our home. We spend so much more time outside that it feels like we've put an addition on the house. We recommended Matt to some friends who had a similarly outstanding experience.

Matt just completed stonework and plantings for my backyard. Several things make him a truly exceptional artist and craftsman.

1. He developed two designs for my backyard. When I fell in love with the more expensive one, he helped plan the work in phases to accommodate my budget.
2. He revised the existing (boring) stonework into a beautiful and interesting series of spaces. The workmanship is flawless.
3. His crew arrived on time, cleaned up after themselves, and did not disturb the neighbors or frighten my cat.
4. Work was completed on schedule and within budget. I received a carefully itemized bill, then another when he realized he had overcharged me.
5. He explained in detail how to get optimal use out of my irrigation system and how it could be expanded (planters, front yard) in the future.
6. The planting design (by Sonia Hildebrand) is stunning.

All this, and he's a nice guy. I recommend Matt without reservation.

Matt was very easy to work with, and made many useful suggestions about our project. It was to remove an old redwood deck that occupied most of our back yard, build some new redwood steps from one of our rear doors, build a balcony for the other door, and do some grading, hardscaping and improve the drainage. There were a few minor issues, but all of them were easy to resolve, and most were mentioned to me by Matt when he saw an unexpected problem. He was not the least expensive contractor we spoke with about this project, but his work was great. My one complaint is that his crew could be more careful with the landscaping they were not working on, but it was more an annoyance than any real damage. From all the contractors we have dealt with this summer, this was indeed a minor problem. I would use him again in the future.