Everything costs more on a slope, and pretending otherwise is how projects stall halfway through. We would rather show you the retaining and drainage number up front than discover it after the plants are ordered.
Where we work from: our shop is at 7980 OH-249, Hicksville, OH. Union Furnace sits outside our home counties — call and we will confirm scheduling before you commit to anything.
Soil and drainage in Union Furnace
Cut-and-fill is the recurring project. A usable patio or a flat lawn panel on a hillside means retaining the cut properly and compacting the fill in lifts rather than dumping it and hoping. Fill placed without compaction settles for years and takes whatever is built on it along.
Building level ground is the recurring project here. A usable patio or a flat lawn panel on a hillside means cut and fill, retaining the cut properly, and compacting the fill in lifts — which is why the hardscape budget on these properties is larger than an equivalent job on flat land.
What Union Furnace properties need most
Properties out here often sit on ground that was farmland within living memory, and they inherit its drainage. Old tile still runs under a great many residential lots, and when a line collapses you get a soft spot that never firms up no matter how much topsoil goes into it. We probe and trace before digging rather than guessing.
The order that gets the most from a budget is almost always the same: drainage and grading first because everything else sits on top of them, then hardscape with sleeves and conduit run for anything you might add later, then structural planting, then beds and mulch, then lighting.
Winter in Union Furnace
A typical winter here produces more ice events than deep snow, which changes what matters in an agreement: material selection by pavement temperature, calibrated application rates, and pre-treatment ahead of forecast freezes rather than reaction afterward.
A written agreement settles at 5 a.m. what nobody wants to argue about then: the trigger depth, the surfaces included, the response window and how de-icing is billed. Everything that goes wrong with snow contracts traces back to something that was never written down.
What Union Furnace properties call us for
These are the services this ground actually needs, ordered by what the soil and terrain in Hocking County demand rather than by what is easiest to sell.
- Retaining Walls & TerracingEngineered walls with real drainage behind them — turning slopes you cannot mow into space you can use.
- Drainage Solutions & Yard GradingFrench drains, swales and regrading that move water away from your foundation before it costs you a basement.
- Sod Installation, Seeding & Lawn RenovationNew lawns, thin lawns and construction scars — graded, amended and established properly the first time.
- Fire Pits & Outdoor Living SpacesFire features, seat walls and outdoor kitchens that stretch an Ohio patio season from May into November.
- Tree & Shrub TrimmingPruned at the right time of year, to the right cut — so plants stay in scale instead of getting sheared into boxes.
- Landscape Design & InstallationA drawn plan before a shovel moves — so the beds, grades and plant choices still make sense in year ten.
Why Union Furnace property owners choose us
We know Hocking County ground
Hocking County sits in the Unglaciated Allegheny Plateau, where thin, sharply acidic sandy soil over sandstone that suits ericaceous plants and defeats most standard nursery stock. We plan around that rather than applying a template written for another part of the state.
We fix the water before anything else
Every dollar spent on plants or hardscape sitting on ground that stays wet gets spent twice. On Hocking County soil we diagnose drainage first — and often the honest answer is two downspouts rather than a system.
46 Google reviews, licensed and insured
Verbatim reviews from neighbours across the region, full coverage on every crew and machine, and financing available so a full plan can be built in one season.
One contractor for all four seasons
Landscaping April through November and snow and ice through the winter, from the same crews. The people who stake a drive in November are the people who mowed it in July.
Nearby places we also serve
Union Furnace sits in Hocking County. We cover these neighbouring communities too:
