How to Choose a Reliable Landscaping & Hardscaping Contractor in St. Louis

Ask every contractor one question first. What goes under the patio or behind the wall, and how do you decide how much? A good hardscape contractor answers with your soil, your slope and where your water goes. A vague one answers with a brand name.

Below are the questions we’d ask if we were hiring, the answers you want to hear, and what our own customers said about working with us. We’re a St. Louis company, serving homeowners here since 2018.

Experience isn’t just how long a landscaping company has been in business. It shows in the base under a patio, a retaining wall built around the slope and the water, drainage that fixes the real problem, and clear answers from the first phone call to the final cleanup. Most people looking into the hardscape work we do in St. Louis start with one simple goal: a paver patio for family dinners, a wall for a hard-to-mow slope, or a fix for water pooling by the house.

Questions to Ask Every Contractor

What makes a hardscape contractor reliable in St. Louis?

A reliable hardscape contractor in St. Louis explains what goes under the work, puts it in a written quote, and shows you finished jobs nearby. Years in business are one measure of experience, but not the only one. You should be able to see what those years produced.

In practice, that means a contractor who can show completed patios and walls, explain why they recommend one solution over another, and point out site conditions that could change the job, like a soggy corner or a slope that sheds water toward the house. They should keep you informed from the estimate to the last day of cleanup, and they should be glad to put you in touch with past customers.

Our own St. Louis work includes retaining walls built around steep grade changes, patios planned around drainage and base preparation, drainage systems for runoff that comes back every storm, and landscapes designed around how the owners actually use the yard. That’s the kind of record worth asking any contractor to show you.

Trusted by homeowners, and people who regularly work with contractors.

A reputation means more when customers say why they were happy. The reviews we get keep coming back to the same things: communication, showing up when we said we would, the quality of the work, a tidy job site, respect for the property, and how the finished patio or wall turned out.

Local Experience Starts With the Property

Local experience means a contractor studies your yard before choosing a product, because two St. Louis lots a few miles apart can behave very differently. Clay-heavy soil is common across the region, but drainage, compaction, slope, past construction, tree roots and grading change from one lot to the next. Some yards drain quickly after a storm. Others stay soggy long after the rain stops.

Some homes sit above the ground around them, and others collect runoff from the yards uphill. Add access for equipment, nearby structures and the freeze-thaw cycles every St. Louis winter brings, and the same patio can need a very different base on two streets in the same town.

Sloped lots raise their own questions, and a good contractor asks them out loud during the walk-through:

• Where does the water go during a heavy rain?
• Is soil washing off the slope or out from under a bed?
• Is the slope hard to mow or keep planted?
• Is an existing wall already leaning or bowing?
• Will changing one area send water or soil toward another?

Building should start with how the property behaves today, not with a paver catalog. If a contractor walks your yard and has nothing to say about the slope, the soil or the downspouts, that tells you something.

What should a paver patio quote include?

A paver patio quote should list the excavation, the base material and how it’s compacted, edge restraint, joint sand, drainage and cleanup, not just the paver and the square footage. Homeowners usually start with the finished space: how big it should be, which paver suits the house, room for a dining table or fire pit, and whether it connects to a walkway. Those choices matter, and they’re the easy part of the patios we build.

The layers you never see after the job decide how the patio holds up. Excavation, the soil underneath, the crushed-stone base, compaction, edge restraint, drainage and the final grade all shape it, because in St. Louis the ground under a patio freezes and thaws every winter. Careful preparation lowers the chance of settling, shifting and low spots that may not show up until long after the crew leaves.

How deep the base goes isn’t one number for every yard. It depends on how wet the soil stays, how heavy the clay is, and what sits on the patio, since a hot tub puts far more weight on the base than a bistro table. A good quote says what the contractor found on your site and what they plan to do about it.

Drainage should be part of the plan before the first shovel goes in. Laying pavers over a wet spot doesn’t fix the water. A proper plan finds where the water comes from, how the finished grade will move it, and where it can safely end up, like a pop-up emitter or a lower part of the yard.

Paver patio construction should account for the finished surface as well as the base, drainage, grade, and surrounding landscape.

Good installation also shows in how the crew runs the job site: where materials sit, how the lawn is protected, and what the yard looks like at the end of each day.

What should you ask about a retaining wall?

Ask where the water behind the wall will go, how the base is built, and whether a wall your height needs reinforcement or a permit. A retaining wall is easy to mistake for decoration, because you only see the block, stone and cap. The structure that matters is hidden behind and under it, pushing back against the soil every day.

The slope, the soil, the way water moves, the base, the wall’s height and the ground around it should set the design of the walls we build across St. Louis County. That matters most when an older wall is being replaced. Taller walls and heavy clay can call for geogrid, a mesh laid between courses that reaches back into the hill, and permit rules change from one St. Louis County municipality to the next.

Retaining walls can also serve a much broader purpose than replacing one that failed. A wall can turn a slope into flat, usable yard, cut down on mowing a steep hill, or tie into a new paver patio and steps.

When a wall is being replaced, finding out why the old one failed is often the most important step. A rotted railroad-tie wall, a block wall with no drain behind it, and a wall sitting on a sunken base each need a different fix.

When you compare wall contractors, look for the one who asks what the wall has to do on your property, not just how many feet of block you want. If nobody asks about the downspout above the wall or the driveway below it, keep asking questions.

How do you know a drainage contractor diagnosed the problem?

A drainage contractor who diagnosed the problem can tell you where the water comes from, where it collects and where it will go, before naming a fix. Homeowners often call with a fix already in mind. The yard stays wet, water collects by the patio, or a neighbor said they need a French drain. Those details help, but the first job is finding out what the water is actually doing.

That matters most on sloped lots, where a new patio or a regraded bed can change how runoff moves in a heavy rain. A good yard drainage company walks the property, looks at every downspout and low spot, and tells you why the water ends up where it does. Sometimes the answer is a buried downspout line, like the one below. Sometimes it’s a French drain or regrading.

Homeowners don’t need to know the name of the drainage system they need before calling a contractor. Describing what happens during and after a storm is often much more useful: where the water runs, where it pools, how long it stays, and whether the basement or garage gets wet.

Landscape Design Should Solve How the Property Works

Landscape design should fix how the yard works day to day, not just pick plants for it. Some design projects start because a yard is hard to live with: lawn torn up after a tree came down, overgrown beds nobody can keep up with, shady spots where grass won’t grow, or a bare yard on a new-build lot.

Other properties have patios, walls and walkways that never feel connected. Good landscape design in St. Louis goes past choosing plants. It accounts for sun, soil, grade, drainage, existing trees, the view from the kitchen window and the paths people actually walk.

Your goals and your site should shape the plan. A family that wants room to eat outside needs something different from a couple who wants less weeding. A shaded, rocky backyard calls for a different approach than an open lot on new construction.

Communication matters most on design work, because owners often know the result they want but not how to get there. A good contractor sketches the options, explains what each one costs in upkeep, and checks back before anything is planted.

What’s Needed to Get a Landscaping or Hardscaping Quote?

To get a quote, you need a short description of the problem or the change you want, your address, and a few photos if you have them. You don’t need to diagnose the property first, and you don’t need a full design, exact measurements or a materials list. These details help:

• The problem you’re seeing or the change you want
• Where the property is
• How you plan to use the finished space
• Any water, slope, settling, erosion, shade or access concerns
• A few photos, if you have them
• Existing patios, walls, trees, concrete, utilities, fencing or other features

Rough measurements help, but they don’t have to be exact. A plain sentence is enough to start: “Our backyard is too steep,” “Water collects beside the house,” “Our retaining wall is leaning,” “The patio pavers are sinking,” or “We want a bigger patio but don’t know where to begin.”

From there, Excel Landscaping takes the lead. We come out for a free on-site assessment, look at the grade, the drainage and what’s already there, talk through the options with you, and put a fixed project price in writing.

How Should You Compare Landscaping Contractors?

Compare landscaping contractors by what each quote includes, not by the bottom line alone. Two bids for the same patio or the same wall can assume very different excavation, base, drainage, grading, materials and cleanup. The cheaper one may simply leave something out.

Look at the bigger picture too. Can the contractor explain why they recommend what they do, and show a job like yours? Do their reviews keep mentioning communication and follow-through? Does the quote say plainly what’s included and what isn’t, such as hauling away old concrete or repairing the lawn after the machines leave?

The recommendation should fit your property, not be the same system sold on every job. Reliability also shows between the estimate and the finished project: calls returned, start dates kept, and questions answered before you have to ask twice.

Red flags when hiring a hardscape contractor

The clearest red flags are a price before anyone has looked at your yard and no straight answer about the base or the water. Watch for these:

• A price given over the phone before anyone has seen the yard
• No answer, or “standard,” when you ask how deep the base is
• No plan for where the water goes
• A large cash deposit before any materials are ordered
• No written quote, or a quote with one line and one number

Any one of these is worth a second question. Two or more, keep looking.

Experience Should Be Something You Can See

The best proof of a contractor’s experience is finished work you can look at and customers who can tell you how the job went. Years in business aren’t the only measure. An older company may still be the wrong fit for a steep backyard, and a newer one may not have a track record yet. Ask to see finished projects across St. Louis that look like yours.

At Excel Landscaping, our more than eight years of experience and 5-star reputation come from real jobs: patios for family dinners, retaining walls on hard slopes, drainage for runoff that kept coming back, and yards rebuilt from the ground up. Our crew brings 25+ years of combined hands-on experience, and we’re a Unilock Authorized Contractor and a Keystone Authorized Contractor.

Behind every project are customers throughout the St. Louis area who can tell you what working with us was like. When you talk to any contractor, the real question is simple:

Have they solved problems like mine before, can they explain what my property needs, and can I see evidence of how they work?