Why Hire Stonehenge?

We’re Small

When you hire us, you’re hiring a small company. We’re small now, we’ll be small in the future. It was never our goal to grow to be a large corporation where the boss doesn’t know the names of all of his employees and their family.

You may be asking yourself – "So you’re small. How does that benefit me?" The biggest difference I’ve seen in large companies versus small ones is in communication. The person you met during our first appointment will be same person that creates your design. And it’s the same person you’ll see on the job site. In having that same person as your contact throughout the entire process you can be assured that the details you discussed with us during the design stage won’t get lost when the project is handed from designer to production manager, production manager to foreman. Having the continuity of seeing the same face from design through construction makes the whole process more comfortable, but more importantly, it allows for more consistent results.

Experience

When you think of a small company, you may think of them as being young and hungry, with more moxie than craftsmanship. While we have a good deal of moxie, we’re not that young, and craftsmanship is what we hang our hat on. When it comes to pavers, for example, it’s quite possible that I installed pavers before anyone in this market. I can say this because I grew up in Metropolitan Detroit, where pavers were a landscape industry staple long before they came to the Fox Valley. I learned from some of the best in the industry while I was growing up and paying my way through college. I brought that knowledge to the Valley and have been improving and refining it ever since. And that’s another benefit of hiring a small company like ours – the guys who know the most about the work are actually doing the work, not handing the job to less experienced hands.

There are plenty of other reasons to hire us, including our guarantee, our portfolio of work, our list of happy customers and more. We just wanted to highlight a few that you may not have been aware of. We hope you’ll consider us for your project and hope to hear from you soon!

The Details

Having grown up installing and maintaining landscapes, I’ve developed a very critical eye. When I step back from work that my hands have touched, I want to know that we’ve done our level best to create a great living space for our customer. That means staying on top of technological developments that could improve the way we install our work. It also means sweating the small stuff. A single flaw can sometimes become the only thing you see when you look over your landscape. An unfinished retaining wall block, improper plant spacing, unlevel pavers can make your dream landscape less dreamy. Here are just a few of the details we pay attention to in order to provide you with a landscape that you’ll enjoy for years:

• Bigger compaction equipment - Bigger isn't always better, but in a lot of cases it is.  With the compaction equipment at our disposal we have the flexibility to choose the right machine for the right job, not just the machine we have available.  Why does this matter?  Inadequately compacted soils and crushed stone base, will shift and settle if adequately compacted.  And when the stone shifts and settles, so does your paver patio or retaining wall.
• The right compaction equipment - Knowing what type of compaction equipment is appropriate for your project can mean the difference between long-term durability and short-term failure.  Many of the properties where we install paver patios  have clay soils, and for those areas where there may be a significant depth of clay soil that is under-compacted (particularly around foundations), plate compactors are not capable of adequate compaction.  Only a rammer/jumping-jack type compactor is capable of tackling that kind of work, yet almost no landscaping companies in our area use them.  We do.
• Aluminum paver edge restraint with locking channels - About six years ago we switched the edging we used for our paver patios and walkways, going from the plastic-based Dimex brand's Edge-Pro®, to Curv-Rite's Stable-Edge aluminum paver restraint.  Why make a big deal out of edging? PVC/Plastic based paver edgings will bow and buckle with the changes in weather, where aluminum will not.  And with the increased strength of aluminum, the edge restraint can (and does) have a lower profile, meaning you won't see it as easily as you can the black plastic type.  And with this brand of aluminum edge restraint, they include a key and keyway in each piece of edging so that each successive piece of edging can be connected to the last, making one continuous strip of edging.  Stronger, more durable, more invisible.  
• Testing base preparation methods - To ensure we're installing the very best hardscapes possible for our Fox Valley customers, we've tested the four primary methods/materials for preparing a crushed stone base.  Side by side, head to head.  We know which prep method will stand up to traffic better than the rest.  Be sure you know, too.
• Testing adhesives - In many hardscape applications polyurethane adhesives are used to bond retaining wall block to each other, or to adjoining pavers.  We tested 10 of the leading adhesives side by side so we could be sure we were installing only the best in our client's yards.  Ask us.  We'd be happy to tell you which adhesive bested the rest.
• Lasers for accurate elevations and grading - Any reputable landscape or construction firm is going to have self-leveling lasers at their disposal to shoot the elevations of the property and it's features.  Doing so ensures that any grading work is done according to approved, engineered drainage plans (and can be verified to within +/- 1/4" every 100')
• Hydroseeding - You know the mess that's often associated with blown straw or hay.  It goes into the street, the neighbor's yards, everywhere.  Hydroseeding gives us the ability to "tack" seed and nutrients in place on the soil, covered in a blanket of hydromulch that will hold moisture, giving your grass seed what it needs to germinate and grow.  Plus, the birds can't get at it.