Design-build landscaping · Calgary & foothills
The half is the chinook — the false spring that freeze-dries cedars in February and heaves patios laid on lazy base. Bluff & Birch designs, draws, and builds yards that hold their shape through all of it: one studio, one crew, from the first site walk to the last swept stone.
One yard, four ways
Most landscaping is designed for a July photograph. We design for the whole calendar — toggle the seasons and watch the same yard carry each one.
How we work
Ninety minutes on your property before anyone draws a line. We map grade and drainage, track the sun, find where the chinook comes over the fence and where the snow piles in March. You talk budget; we talk plainly about what it buys.
Week 0A scaled site plan on paper, a planting schedule named plant by plant, and material samples you can stand on. Two rounds of revisions included — we would rather change the drawing than the patio.
Weeks 1–3The foreman who breaks ground is the one who sweeps the patio on the last day. No subcontractor roulette. Weekly photo updates, a tidy site every Friday, and a walkthrough with a one-year check-in.
Weeks 4–12What we design & build
Most clients start with a master plan and build in phases. Full design-build projects start around $45,000.
Master plans, grading and drainage strategy, and permit-ready drawings for decks, walls, and structures. The plan is the cheap part of a six-figure yard — skip it and you pay for it elsewhere, usually twice.
Master plans from $3,800 · credited if we build
Patios, retaining walls, steps, and outdoor kitchens in Rundle stone, paver, and cedar. Ten inches of compacted base as standard, because freeze-thaw doesn't accept excuses — ours don't heave, and we put that in writing.
Patios from $14,000 · walls from $9,500
Zone 4a palettes planted in drifts — feather reed grass, dwarf sumac, catmint, junipers that shrug off a chinook. No cedars on southwest exposures. Guaranteed through the first winter.
From $6,500
Low-voltage, warm 2700K only. Path, step, and tree lighting designed for winter first — that's when you'll actually see it at five in the afternoon.
From $4,200
A pruning calendar, spring and fall crews, and June hail triage from people who know every plant in the yard because they put it there.
Featured build · Altadore, Calgary
A corner lot in Altadore with a view of the neighbours' fences and a wind problem nobody had named. The southwest exposure funnelled chinooks straight across the yard — the previous cedars had freeze-dried twice. We rebuilt the bones first: a cedar screen set off the property line to break the wind without boxing in the light, then 640 square feet of Rundle stone over a ten-inch compacted base. Three clump birches went in where they would throw shade on the west windows by July. The beds were planted in drifts of feather reed grass, catmint, and dwarf sumac — things that stand up in January. The owners hosted twenty people ten weeks after our first site walk.
Seasonal maintenance
Calgary weather doesn't sign off on the build. Hail arrives in June with no appointment, chinooks freeze-dry evergreens in February, and a yard left alone for two seasons quietly starts undoing itself.
The Seasonal Partner plan keeps every yard we've built — and plenty we didn't — in shape from April opening to freeze-up, handled by crews who know the planting schedule because they wrote it.
Acreages in Springbank, Bearspaw, and Priddis are quoted by site — tell us your gate code and we'll bring the long hoses.
$290/mofrom · April–October
Our standing-care plan for design-build clients and well-loved yards we didn't build. Limited to 40 properties a season.
The drawings alone were worth the fee — for the first time we understood our own yard. The crew who drew it built it, and you can tell.
M. & D. Okafor · Altadore
Hail flattened the beds on a Friday in June. They were on site Monday with a plan, and by the next weekend you'd never have known.
S. Hartley · Springbank
Book a consult
Consults run about ninety minutes, on site. We walk the property, talk budget plainly, and tell you what we'd do with it — whether or not you build with us. Design work booked now breaks ground first in spring.