We are based in Dunwoody, and almost everything we build sits within about twenty minutes of it. That is on purpose. A crew that spends the morning driving is a crew that is not building anything, and a battery-powered crew has one more reason to stay close: the trailer charges off solar between stops, and two jobs in the same neighborhood are worth more to us than one long haul across town.
Here is where we work and what tends to be different about each place. Every city below has its own page with the permit thresholds, the soil, the neighborhoods and the things that catch people out.
Dunwoody
Home. Perimeter Creek starts inside the city limits, which means whatever leaves a Dunwoody yard has nothing upstream to dilute it, and that shapes how we handle water here more than in any other city on this list. The rule that surprises people most is the hard-surface cap: a street-facing yard is limited to 35 percent coverage, and gravel counts toward it, so a driveway widening turns into arithmetic before it turns into a quote. Decks always need a permit, and land disturbance carries an erosion control bond that belongs in the estimate rather than in week three.
Read the Dunwoody landscaping page, or go straight to paver patios, retaining walls, steps, walkways and driveways, outdoor kitchens, fire pits, landscape lighting, drainage and grading or backyard makeovers.
Sandy Springs
The Chattahoochee forms the west and north border, and the stream buffers stack: twenty-five feet of state buffer, twenty-five of city, and a twenty-five foot impervious setback on top. Nothing gets built within seventy-five feet of state waters. Walls are the other thing to know here, because the city measures height from the bottom of the footing rather than from the ground you are standing on, which pushes a lot of walls over the threshold that homeowners assumed were under it.
See the Sandy Springs page, or retaining walls, paver patios and outdoor kitchens.
Brookhaven
The lowest tree threshold in the area by some distance: a permit is required to remove any tree four inches in diameter or larger, and the city runs three full-time arborists. That is less an obstacle than an ordering problem, because trees have to be settled before the hardscape is drawn rather than after. Brookhaven’s share of the upper Nancy Creek watershed is about 38 percent impervious, well past the level at which streams start to come apart, which is why so many calls here begin with water and end with a wall.
See the Brookhaven page, or yard drainage and French drains and retaining walls.
Chamblee
Small city, more permits than people expect. Retaining walls need one at forty-eight inches, replacing or enlarging a driveway needs a land disturbance pre-screen, decks always need one, and specimen trees or more than five non-specimen trees in a year trigger a tree permit. Chamblee’s own plan describes the city as sitting at the top of two critically impacted watersheds, which is a blunt way of saying that what happens in these yards shows up downstream quickly.
See the Chamblee page or paver patios in Chamblee.
Doraville
Doraville reviews run about ten business days, and nothing can be submitted until the owner affidavit has been notarised, so a permitted job here needs two extra weeks on the calendar that nobody mentions at the first conversation. Right-of-way encroachment is its own permit type, which matters the moment a driveway apron is involved. The Northwoods mid-century ranches have their own character and their own drainage habits, most of them now fifty years old and none of them built for the amount of hard surface that has gone in around them since.
See the Doraville page.
Peachtree Corners
Two approvals on two different clocks. The city requires a Land Development Permit once a project disturbs more than five thousand square feet, and every permitted project has to hold the first inch of rainfall on site. Then there is the neighbourhood: this is HOA and swim-tennis country, and the architectural review is usually the longer lead time and the one we cannot file on your behalf. Trees need a permit at any size, up to ten per property in a year.
See the Peachtree Corners page.
Perimeter Center, and commercial properties generally
Perimeter Center is not a city. It spans Dunwoody, Sandy Springs and Brookhaven, holds more than twenty-nine million square feet of office space and six million of retail, and is run in part by two self-taxing improvement districts. Access is the real constraint here rather than scope: parking decks with height bars a trailer will not clear, loading zones held for deliveries, three MARTA stations, and around Pill Hill an ambulance approach that has to stay clear. Quiet equipment is what makes daytime service possible at all on an occupied property.
See commercial landscaping in Perimeter Center and commercial maintenance.
Norcross and Roswell
We take work in both and we do not have a page for either yet. If you are in one of them, call and ask rather than assuming the answer is no. The honest test is whether the job is big enough to justify the drive, and we will tell you plainly if it is not.
Why the map stays small
Plenty of companies list thirty cities. We list eight, and there is a reason beyond modesty. Permit rules here change at the city line, sometimes sharply: a wall that needs nothing in one city needs an engineer’s stamp two miles away. Knowing that without looking it up is the difference between a start date that holds and one that slips a month. Keeping the radius tight also means the same faces show up at your house, and the driving burns a fraction of what chasing work across the metro would.
What we do in all of them
Hardscape and drainage carry most of our year: patios, walls, steps, walks and drives, drainage, French drains and grading, fire features, outdoor kitchens and lighting. Alongside that runs the green side: eco-friendly lawn care, fertilization, weed and pest control, design and planting, and year-round maintenance. The equipment is battery powered and charged from the solar trailer, which is genuinely quieter and genuinely cleaner, with one honest exception: a plate compactor, a masonry saw and a stump grinder are loud whatever powers them, and we tell you in advance which day those land on.
Questions about where we work
Do you charge more to work outside Dunwoody? No. Travel inside the cities on this page is part of how we schedule rather than a line on your estimate. What does move a number is access, slope and how far material has to be carried from the truck to the work, and those vary far more within a single city than they do between cities.
I am just outside your area. Is it worth calling? Yes, especially for hardscape or drainage work. Small recurring maintenance at the edge of the map rarely makes sense for either of us, and we will say so rather than take it and then arrive late all season. A patio, a wall or a drainage fix usually does make sense.
Do you pull the permits or do I? We handle the permits tied to the work we are doing, and at the estimate we tell you which ones the job needs and roughly how long that city takes to turn them around. The exception is HOA and architectural review, which the owner has to file. In Peachtree Corners in particular that is often the longest wait in the entire project, so it is worth starting the week you decide to go ahead.
Are the rules really that different from one city to the next? They are. Tree removal alone ranges from four inches in Brookhaven to eighteen in Sandy Springs. Wall permits sit at four feet in most places and forty-eight inches in Chamblee, and Sandy Springs measures that height from the bottom of the footing rather than from the ground. Doraville needs a notarised affidavit before anything can even be submitted. Assuming that last year’s job in one city applies to this one is the most common reason a start date slips.
Do you work on commercial properties in all of these cities? Yes. Office parks, medical offices, HOA common areas, retail, churches and schools. Quiet daytime service is the whole argument on an occupied property, which is why most of our commercial work sits in and around Perimeter Center.
How soon can you come and look? Usually within a few days. The site visit is free, it takes about half an hour, and you get a written scope afterwards rather than a number called out from the driveway.
Book a free site visit
Tell us the city and either what is going wrong or what you want built. We will come out, walk it with you and put the scope in writing. Pricing follows the site visit, because a patio on a flat back yard with a gate wide enough for a machine and the same patio up a flight of steps behind a mature oak are not the same job and should not carry the same number. Call (404) 369-0989 or use the contact page.