Landscaping in Afton, MN and the Surrounding Towns
One of our two locations. Natural stone and native planting for Afton, Lake Elmo, Stillwater, Bayport and the towns around them, on ground we already know.
Afton is where we work from
Evergreen Landscapes keeps a location in Afton, Minnesota, alongside our Rosemount shop. Afton is not a town we drive out to. It is where a good share of our east metro work starts and ends, and it shapes how we think about the rest of Washington County, from Lake Elmo and Stillwater down through Bayport and the river towns.
Afton is river country. Lots run big, the ground moves, and a lot of properties back onto woods or drop toward the St. Croix valley. That changes the work. Flat-yard landscaping does not survive on a slope, and a planting plan that ignores what is already growing at the wood line tends to get swallowed within a few seasons.
Natural stone, and working with the grade
Most Afton projects start with the slope. Where the ground falls away, boulder walls and terracing turn a bank that cannot be used into two or three levels that can. Where water runs, it has to be given somewhere to go before anything is planted, because a bed built in the path of runoff is a bed that will be rebuilt.
What holds those levels up matters as much as the levels. In Afton we lean on natural stone: natural stone outcroppings and weathered fieldstone for walls, stone treads for steps, flagstone for the paths between them. Quarried Minnesota and Midwest stone weathers the way the bluffs above the river do, so a wall that looks right the summer it goes in still looks right years later. On a wooded lot above the valley, that is usually what people are after.
We handle the grading, the drainage and the stone in the same plan as the planting, so the parts that hold the yard up and the parts you look at are designed together.
A fire pit set into the hill
A fire pit does not need a flat yard. On a sloped lot the better move is to cut the seating area into the bank and hold the grade with stone. Natural stone outcroppings form the back wall, a few stone treads take you down to it, and the pavers sit level where the ground did not.
The stone does the structural work and the visual work at once. The wall that keeps the hill where it belongs is also what makes the space feel settled, as if it had always been there. That is the kind of project Afton lots ask for, and the kind we like to build.
Woods, edges and buckthorn
Properties with a wooded edge in Afton almost always have buckthorn in them. It leafs out before anything native and holds its leaves after everything else has dropped, so it shades out the understory and leaves bare soil that washes downhill.
Clearing it is straightforward work, but it is only half the job. Bare ground fills in with whatever arrives first, and what arrives first is usually more buckthorn. We plan the replanting at the same time as the clearing, generally with natives that suit a shaded woodland edge.
What goes back in is the other half of it. Little bluestem and prairie dropseed on the open ground, serviceberry, pagoda dogwood and ninebark along the edge, oak and hazel where there is room for them. Native plants root deeper than a nursery hedge, they hold soil on a grade, and once they are established they get through a dry August without anyone standing over them with a hose.
Saunas, and the ground around them
We install saunas in more than one style, not only the barrel sauna in the photo, and we build the space a sauna sits in. That second part is the one people underestimate. A sauna dropped on a gravel pad is a sauna in a yard. Set it on a proper base, run a flagstone path to the door, tuck low lighting into the stone and screen it with planting, and it becomes a place you walk out to on a January night without thinking about it.
In Afton that usually means working the sauna into a slope or a wooded edge rather than clearing a spot for it. The path, the steps, the lighting and the planting are designed with the sauna, not added after it.
What we do in Afton
Design and construction in natural stone and native plants, the clearing that comes before it, and the maintenance that keeps it.
We are five minutes away
Being based in Afton changes the small things rather than the big ones. A forgotten fitting does not cost an afternoon. A load of boulders turns up when it was supposed to. Someone can swing past on the way home and look at how a bed drains after rain, which is when you actually learn something about a yard.
None of that shows up in a photograph of a finished project, and all of it shows up in how the finished project turns out.
Afton questions
Are you actually based in Afton?
Yes. Evergreen Landscapes has a location in Afton, Minnesota, in addition to our Rosemount shop. Afton and the surrounding Washington County towns are part of our regular service area, not an outlying one.
Do you work on sloped and wooded lots?
Yes, and in Afton that is most of them. Boulder walls, terracing, steps, grading and drainage are a normal part of the work here rather than an add-on.
Can you clear buckthorn on a wooded property?
Yes. We cut and pull the stems, treat the cut stumps so they do not resprout, and haul the brush away. Replanting the cleared ground usually belongs in the same plan.
What other towns near Afton do you serve?
Lake Elmo, Stillwater, Bayport, Woodbury, Cottage Grove and Hastings, along with the south metro towns around our Rosemount shop.
Tell us about your property
Send us the details and we will get back to you.