Brookhaven has a water problem, and we fix water problems
Nancy Creek and Peachtree Creek both run through Brookhaven, and the upper Nancy Creek watershed here is 38% hard surface, well past the point where a stream stays healthy. The city’s own study named streambank erosion “causing property loss” as one of its three biggest issues. Translated to a back yard: water comes off the roofs and driveways faster than the red clay can take it, it runs to the low corner of the lot, and it sits there. A third of the calls we get from Brookhaven are about a soggy yard, a damp crawlspace, or a creek bank that’s eating the lawn.
We’re based in Dunwoody, about ten minutes up Ashford-Dunwoody Road. All of our equipment is electric and charged from solar on the trailer, which matters in a city whose noise ordinance keeps yard tools off before 9 on weekends.
Call (404) 369-0989 or book a free site visit.
What we build in Brookhaven
Drainage and French drains. Underground downspout extensions, French drains, catch basins, channel drains cut into driveways, dry creek beds that carry water and look like they belong, and regrading when the yard tilts toward the house. Drainage and French Drains
Paver and stone patios. The teardown boom in Drew Valley, Ashford Park and Brookhaven Fields left a lot of new houses with builder-grade concrete pads out back. We replace them with paver, bluestone and flagstone patios, seat walls and fire pits. Paver Patios
Retaining walls. Walls four feet or higher need a permit through the city’s Project Portal with plans; we handle it. Block, boulder, concrete, timber replacement. Retaining Walls
Steps and walkways. Front walks and stoop steps for the 1940s and ’50s cottages in Ashford Park and Lynwood Park, where the original concrete has heaved.
Planting and natives. Brookhaven runs a city-owned native tree nursery at Osborne Park that gives trees to residents for free. We plant them, and we plant the understory that goes with them: oakleaf hydrangea, beautyberry, Christmas fern, foamflower, river oats along the wet spots.
Quiet electric lawn care. Weekly and bi-weekly maintenance, plus fertilization, weed control and pest control with an organic option for each. Brookhaven’s ordinance bars yard tools from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. and before 9 a.m. on weekends; ours are quiet enough that nobody checks the clock.
Commercial grounds. Office and medical buildings along Peachtree Road and around Town Brookhaven, church and school campuses, HOA common areas. Commercial Maintenance
Brookhaven yards, specifically
Infill lots. Drew Valley’s median house was built in 1955 on a 13,000-square-foot lot with no HOA, and a large share of them have been torn down and rebuilt bigger. A bigger roof on the same lot means more runoff on the same clay, and the new house often sits higher than the neighbors. Drainage is the first conversation on almost every new-build yard we see.
Creek lots. Anything along Nancy Creek, Peachtree Creek or the branches that feed Murphey Candler Lake sits in a stream buffer and gets city review. Bank stabilization with native plantings and stone is usually allowed where a wall isn’t.
Trees. Brookhaven permits removal of any tree four inches and up and employs three full-time arborists. We plan every patio and wall around the canopy.
Old walls. Historic Brookhaven and the streets around Capital City Club have stone and brick walls from the 1920s and ’30s; matching them is a different job from stacking block, and we’ve done both.
What Brookhaven clients say
“Lloyd’s expertise is unmatched. He identified affordable and effective solutions for our water drainage issues. We’re so grateful to Lloyd and his team for their fast and efficient project execution.” – Deena M. (Google)
“Our back yard now feels like a completely different space. He was very responsive and prompt, and helped us tackle some issues outside the original scope of the job.” – Kevin B. (Google)
The tree ordinance decides the order we work in
Brookhaven asks for a permit before any tree four inches across or bigger comes out, which is a lower bar than any neighbouring city, and it employs three full-time arborists who actually look. That single rule changes how a job here gets planned, so it is worth saying out loud what it means for your project.
Trees get settled first, then the design. On most jobs a contractor draws the patio and then works out what is in the way. Here we do it the other way round. We walk the yard, mark what is staying, and lay the hard surfaces out around the canopy. Redrawing a patio on paper costs an afternoon. Redrawing it after the stone is delivered costs a great deal more.
The tree application is its own application. It is separate from a land disturbance permit and separate from a retaining wall permit, and it runs on its own clock through the city’s project portal. Three approvals with three timelines is why we ask about start dates early and why we would rather give you a realistic month than an optimistic week.
Roots are the part nobody plans for. A mature oak’s feeder roots sit in the top foot of soil and spread out past the branch tips, not down. So we hand dig inside the drip line, we keep the plate compactor out of it, and we do not raise the grade over a root flare. A few inches of fill over the base of a trunk will kill a tree slowly enough that nobody connects the two, which is how a lot of Brookhaven’s dead oaks got that way.
If a tree genuinely has to go. Dead, hollow, leaning over the house, or root-plated after a storm are all real reasons, and the city is not unreasonable about them. We plan the replanting into the job rather than treating it as a penalty, and the city’s own native tree nursery at Osborne Park means the replacement often costs nothing but the planting.
Lawns under old canopy, and when to stop fighting
Half the calls we get from Ashford Park, Brookhaven Fields and Historic Brookhaven are some version of the same sentence: the grass will not grow in the back. It usually will not, and the reason is rarely the grass.
The arithmetic under a mature oak. Turf wants six hours of sun. Under a big canopy it gets two or three, and it is also competing for water with a tree that drinks first and drinks more. Fescue will hang on for a season with enough seed and enough water, then thin out by August, and the honest cost of that cycle is a bag of seed and a water bill every year forever.
What we do instead. Pull the lawn back to the sunny part of the yard where it will actually thrive, and turn the shade into planted beds. Under canopy the plants that hold up here are Christmas fern, green-and-gold, dwarf crested iris, foamflower and Lenten rose at ground level, with mountain laurel, Piedmont azalea and oakleaf hydrangea in the middle layer. Along a wet edge, river oats and American hornbeam do not mind having damp feet. It is less mowing, less water and less work, and it looks like it was meant to be that way rather than like a lawn that failed.
Where the lawn stays, we change how it is treated. Mowing height goes up, because taller blades shade their own roots and hold moisture. Fertiliser under a stressed tree gets pulled back rather than pushed, since pushing top growth on a plant that cannot support it is how you get disease. And we stay off the ground when it is soaked, because red clay compacted by a mower in February is the reason the grass struggles in June.
Questions Brookhaven homeowners ask us
Why does my back yard stay wet for days after it rains? Red clay drains at a fraction of an inch an hour, and Brookhaven lots collect water from roofs, driveways and uphill neighbors. The fix is almost always some combination of getting the downspouts underground and away from the house, a French drain across the low side, and a place for the water to go.
Do I need a permit for drainage work? Not for residential French drains and downspout extensions. Work in a stream buffer or that moves a lot of soil does need city review, and we’ll tell you if your yard falls in that category.
Do I need a permit for a retaining wall? Four feet or higher, yes, through the city’s Project Portal with plans. Under four feet, no.
Can you work around the big trees? Yes, and we have to: the city protects everything four inches and up. Patios and walls get designed around root zones.
Is your equipment really all electric? Yes, including the compactors and saws on a hardscape job. The trailer carries the batteries and the solar panels that charge them.
What hours can you work in Brookhaven? Weekdays 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.; weekends from 9. We schedule inside that.
Nearby
The shop is ten minutes up Ashford-Dunwoody in Dunwoody, and most of a working week stays inside that circle: Chamblee, Doraville, Sandy Springs and Peachtree Corners. If you would rather read about one service than one city, the long versions are drainage, French drains and grading, eco-friendly lawn care and fertilization, weed and pest control.
Two of these are written up for Brookhaven specifically, around this city’s rules and the Nancy Creek watershed it sits in: yard drainage and French drains and retaining walls.
Cooking outside is a common ask here and the canopy usually decides it, because a roof over a grill has to go somewhere that does not mean taking a protected tree. We look at that before the layout rather than after. The design side is on our outdoor kitchens page, and the front approach on our steps, walkways and driveways page.
If what you actually need is the weekly and seasonal side rather than a build, there is a separate page on eco-friendly lawn care in Brookhaven. It goes into mulching the leaf load back into the lawn instead of hauling it away, keeping mowers and trimmers off tree roots and trunks, why moss keeps coming back, and what a lawn on a teardown lot needs before it needs fertiliser.
Book a site visit
(404) 369-0989 · info@oakavelandscape.com · book a free site visit