Zone 08 · Stone · Build
Patios, stone walkways and retaining walls, built on a base that holds.
Custom patios, walkways and retaining walls from the Pureleaf crew, built to look good and to work around your house.
Chapter 01
Patios, walkways and walls: what stone work is for
Hardscape is the part of a yard that does not grow. A patio gives you a flat place to sit and cook. A walkway gives people a dry, defined route from the drive to the door. A retaining wall holds a slope back or lifts a bed up to where it can be seen. Pureleaf builds all three, which is how their own page puts it: custom patios, walkways and retaining walls.
Don Whitehead moved from the East coast into an existing home in Rogers and wanted a Tuscan villa feel. In his Google review he wrote that the crew built stone walkways and an Italian terrazzo reminiscent of a village in Chianti, and found large boulders to stand in for Italian marble. That is the point of stone work: it sets the character of the whole yard, and the plants then have something to sit against.
Stone and planting work best when they are planned together. A walkway decides where the beds go, and a wall decides how deep they can be. Pureleaf does the landscape and plant side as well, so the stone is not built first and then worked around.
Finished flagstone walkway and patio with a gravel border around the corner of a brick house
The base comes first
Most failed patios and walkways fail from underneath. Skip the excavation and the compacted base, and the stone settles unevenly after the first wet season: flagstone rocks underfoot, joints open up, and one corner dips toward the house.
A proper job digs out the soft topsoil, builds a compacted base in layers, sets edge restraint so the stone cannot creep outward, and lays the surface with a slight fall so water runs away from the house instead of toward it. None of that shows when the job is finished, and all of it decides whether the job still looks finished after a few winters.
Retaining walls get the same attention. A solid footing, courses set level, and a way for water behind the wall to get past it, so the soil is not pushing against stone it cannot move. Whether it is a stacked-block wall above new sod or a wall around a circle drive, the base is where the wall is really built.
Chapter 03
The work behind the photos, and how to start
Pureleaf's photos show the range: a finished flagstone walkway and patio with a gravel border around the corner of a brick house, with a shot of the same house mid-build and a wheelbarrow in the frame; a flagstone stepping path through fresh dark mulch beside a cedar fence; and a stacked-block retaining wall with a river-rock bed above freshly laid sod.
Bob Sacamano had Pureleaf landscape his circle drive, including building a retaining wall. That is a bigger project than a patio, and it came out as the kind of job a customer comes back to write about. Don Whitehead's yard in Rogers brought stone, plants and boulders together, and he wrote that Pureleaf will be maintaining it going forward.
Stone is built to last, so start with a conversation. Call or text (479) 601-2057 and tell the crew what you have in mind and where the yard sits, whether that is Rogers, Bentonville, Fayetteville, Bella Vista or Lowell. The quote takes three steps: send a text, chat on the phone, receive a quote. After the build, the same crew can mow, mulch and keep the beds up.
“We had them landscape our circle drive, including building a retaining wall, and it turned out amazing!” Bob Sacamano, from Pureleaf's reviews page.