From first conversation to finished garden.

A first call covers four things: what you are trying to make, what the land will allow, a rough budget range without tier segmentation, and what timeline is realistic against the permit clock and the plant-sourcing window. The conversation runs for as long as it runs; there is no qualification script and no intake form gating the exchange. A caller describes the property, the way the family lives around it, what has been considered and ruled out, what has been tried and failed. We ask what the architecture is doing on the house and what the adjacent lots already do to the microclimate. Nobody is graded on their answers. The phone call begins as a conversation about the place, not as a qualification exercise.

One of the three Principals answers the phone — Jeffery Riddle, Hayden Davenport, or Tyler Bigham — not a business-development lead routing the conversation, not a project-manager intermediary reading from a prepared response, not a coordinator the caller has never spoken to. The Principal who takes the first call is the same Principal who walks the site, signs the drawing set at the end of the design phase, and stands at the final walkthrough a year later. When a call goes to voicemail, one of the three of us returns it the same day. The structure is not a courtesy we advertise; it is how we make the rest of the work accountable, and it is the simplest way to answer the question of who is responsible for a decision — there is a name, and the name is on the drawing.

A caller leaves the conversation with a first read on whether Alterra is the right practice for the work. That read is given plainly: an honest note on scope fit, on timeline realism against the caller's planning window, and on whether the budget range is coherent with what the project is asking for. When the answer is no, the conversation ends in a referral to a practice that is a better fit — a designer whose register suits the project, a contractor whose scale matches, a firm whose specialization covers ground we do not. The first call is not a close. It is either the beginning of a working relationship or an honest redirection to a practice that serves the project better.

The site walk begins with measurement and observation. Every mature tree on the property is inventoried and photographed against the project record: species to Latin binomial, caliper measured at four and a half feet, drip line mapped in relation to proposed disturbance, condition notes on trunk, canopy, and root collar. Soils and drainage are field-read rather than inferred from the county soil survey alone — we probe at multiple depths, observe the behavior of a test pour on the steeper grades, and cross-reference with the survey to confirm or correct. Microclimate is read across the calendar year: prevailing winter wind exposure, shade movement through the day, frost-pocket identification at low spots, and the heat retention of impervious cover that holds July evenings into the low nineties until well after sunset.

Story-gathering runs alongside the measurements. We ask how the outdoor space is used now, how it has worked and failed across prior seasons, what the house's architecture is asking the landscape to do that the current ground plane is not delivering. Where the family eats in August, when the heat makes the west-side patio unusable before six. Where the back door exits and what it should open to, rather than what it currently opens to. Where dogs run and where children play, and where neither will be welcome in the finished garden. The architecture's rhythm — window rhythm, roof pitch, material palette — sets a register the landscape has to answer to, and the walk is how the register gets read before any drawing is attempted.

We carry post-Uri performance data from prior Alterra sites into this phase. Where we have prior project records from a nearby lot, we pull up the freeze-window observations from the blocks we built through in 2021 and the years that followed — which species held, which failed, which came back on a lag, which recovered to form and which recovered stunted. Microclimatic exposure notes from those sites feed the reading on the current one: south-facing wall modulations, cold-air drainage paths, wind-channel behavior specific to the neighborhood's street grid. A species that failed within the same block is flagged at the walk, before it can make its way onto a draft palette. Post-Uri discipline enters the record at Site & Story, not at permit submittal or at plant delivery.

The drawing set is the specification. A site plan, a planting plan, grading and drainage, irrigation, hardscape sections, lighting — each sheet is a document the Build phase executes against, not a rendering the client is expected to infer intent from. The planting plan names every species by Latin binomial so the nursery order is unambiguous. The hardscape section calls out mortar chemistry and joint dimension at built-line tolerance. The irrigation plan shows manifold location and drain-point geometry. The client reviews the complete set before a permit application is filed or a material order is placed; revisions happen on paper, where they cost the project time rather than tearing up finished work to correct.

Every species on the planting plan has been reviewed against the February 2021 freeze record before it arrives on the drawing. Zone 8a and 8b boundary conditions are the design condition, not an edge case to be acknowledged and moved past — the plant that reads as zone 8 on a nursery tag and behaves as zone 9 in the ground is the plant we do not draw. Escarpment live oak and eastern red cedar replace the tender evergreens that failed across the metro. Irrigation is drawn for freeze-event protection at the design stage — manifold sited in a sheltered microclimate, insulation spec matched to exposure, drain-point geometry at every low run — rather than deferred to the Build phase where a retrofit costs the client time and concrete.

Material samples are reviewed on site, at the house, against the existing exterior and the hardscape the new work will relate to. Physical stone sits against the house cladding, mortar chemistry at the joint width the field will cut, finish swatches on the section they will appear in. Lueders limestone and Pennsylvania bluestone do not read the same under full DFW light — the afternoon western sun pulls different temperature values out of the two stones, and the reading has to be made under the light the finished work will live in, not under office fluorescents. The sample review is the moment to revise the specification, not the moment the stone sets.

Engineering coordination happens inside the permit set. Pergolas over the code-height threshold, retaining walls where the jurisdiction requires a sealed plan, and large water features with load calculations each carry their own engineering deliverable, prepared by a discipline-specific engineer. Civil engineering for grading and drainage is provided where the municipality requires a sealed sheet — most often on substantial regrading or detention calculations on lots that trigger the local stormwater threshold. The engineered sheets are incorporated into the drawing set before it goes to the city; they are not a retrofit prepared after a plan examiner flags the omission, which is the sequence that adds weeks to a project already planned to a delivery date.

Permitting splits by municipality. HOA architectural review is navigated first on lots where an HOA governs the exterior envelope. Tree preservation ordinance compliance is specific to the site's jurisdiction: Dallas Article X Section 51A-10.131 and its two-acre residential exemption applies where relevant; McKinney MARC zoning and setback review governs projects in the northern sections of the city; Lucas's tree preservation ordinance applies on the larger rural and acreage lots in that jurisdiction. Each DFW municipality runs its own permit timeline, and the timelines are not comparable — a permit that clears in three weeks in one city clears in ten in another. Alterra maintains running relationships with the permit offices in the municipalities where we work most often, which does not shorten a timeline but does make the steps inside it predictable.

Credentialed sign-off closes the permitting phase. The Principal responsible for each discipline signs the sheet — irrigation, planting, installation — with the license number on record. Specific license numbers stay as [OPERATOR: per-Principal TCEQ Licensed Irrigator number and TMCNP Nursery and Floral Professional number per D-14 final content entry]. The TCEQ Licensed Irrigator credential licenses irrigation practice at the state level; the TMCNP designation is an industry certification that documents depth in nursery and floral practice. A Principal's signature on a permit sheet is the professional liability those credentials carry — not a procedural stamp but a representation that the work, at the level the drawing specifies, is the work the signing Principal stands behind.

Build sequencing runs in a specific order. Hardscape first, then pools and spas, then planting, with irrigation rough-in and lighting conduit chases installed before stone sets. The sequence is not arbitrary; it prevents tearing up finished hardscape to run pipe, prevents compacting finished planting beds with equipment, and allows each trade to work without damaging what the prior trade completed. A bed compacted by a Bobcat will not drain for six years. A hardscape joint cracked because the irrigation line was retrofitted after pour will not re-bond. The sequence is documented in the project record before the first crew arrives on site, and it does not get renegotiated mid-project to accommodate a schedule pressure.

Every subcontractor on the project is named on the record. Named collaborators on record — [OPERATOR: per-project collaborator list, held as placeholder per D-14 final content entry]. The mason, the plaster crew, the electrician, the plumber, the pool builder, the steel fabricator — each is identified in the project file and introduced to the homeowner at the appropriate phase. The homeowner is not presented with a crew they have never been introduced to, and the subcontractors are not rotated out mid-project to clear scheduling conflicts on other jobs the subcontractor is running. The Principal is physically present for the key sequencing decisions — first course of stone, irrigation rough-in signoff, planting layout — not available by phone in case a question comes up after the fact.

In-build resilience discipline carries forward from the drawings. We verify freeze-hardened irrigation manifolds in the sheltered microclimates identified at Site & Story. Insulation spec is matched to the exposure measured at that walk, not the trade default for the region. Fixture housing ratings are confirmed before installation, against the part-number callouts on the lighting plan and the IP66 minimum for pool-deck electrical. Material choices that survived Uri — Lueders limestone at structural thickness, a lime-rich Type N mortar chemistry, brass-body autofill fittings with drain ports — are executed in this phase, not discovered missing during warranty review. The post-Uri specification does not live only on paper; the Principal on site carries it through every material delivery and every subcontractor decision.

Handoff is a walkthrough, not a handover. The homeowner receives a photo-indexed package that documents every valve location, every drain clearout, every winterization action, and every seasonal operation in plain English. The package is not a binder dropped at the door; it is walked through in person, every page, with the photographs matching the hardware in the ground. Even though we do not offer a maintenance service, we document the cadence of actions the landscape will require — irrigation seasonal startup and shutdown, freeze-drain protocol, pruning window, fertilizer schedule where applicable — so the homeowner holds the record whether they engage a third party to execute it or do the work themselves. The document is written so a reader six years from now, with no direct memory of the install, can find what they need.

We walk every project site at twelve months and at thirty-six months. What we check is specific: establishment on every planted specimen, canopy development on the trees, soil moisture indicators under the irrigation distribution, and freeze-recovery signs from the prior winter on any plant that took a cold-window hit. The data does not sit in an archive; it feeds forward into the next Alterra project's Site & Story read. A species that underperformed at Year 1 gets flagged in the palette review before the next comparable site goes to drawing. The review is not a warranty call — it is a design feedback mechanism. Plants that underperform get documented and named, not silently replaced and charged to the homeowner as a routine warranty swap.

The warranty document itself is specific to the project. It names the species covered by Latin binomial, the irrigation zones by the same zone numbering used on the drawing set, and the hardscape materials by the same specifications the mason was handed. Duration is set by category — plant performance carries one and three-year marks, irrigation carries its own term, hardscape carries its own — and the exclusions are written in plain language rather than buried in a generic contractor form. The warranty is not a promotional flourish; it is the terms the work is executed against. A homeowner who wants to read the exact cover for a specific live oak ten months after install can find the species on the sheet and the cover language written for that species, because the document was drawn to allow that.