The Studio — Bend, Oregon
Sagebrush is a design-build studio on Bend's west side. We draw the plan, we pull the permits, we run the excavator, and we come back in year two to see whether the plants took. One team, one contract, one phone number.
The crew at a Discovery West build, second week of May — the first frost-safe planting window of the year.
How it started
— Elise Marchetti, principal designer
In 2010 I bought a 1978 house off Century Drive with a backyard that was three feet of pumice over a basalt shelf. I had a landscape architecture degree from Oregon and a plan drawn at 1/8" scale that assumed I could dig anywhere I wanted. I could not. The shelf sat eight inches below grade across the whole south half of the lot, and the plan went in the burn pile.
That was the education. Bend is not a place where you draw first and dig later. Every plan we produce now starts with a probe bar and a shovel in six or eight spots, because the difference between a patio that sits on native subgrade and a patio that needs 14 yards of rock hauled out is a five-figure difference, and the client deserves to know it before they sign, not in week three.
I ran the design side alone for four years, subbing out the build, and watched good drawings get built badly — walls without drainage stone behind them, drip lines stapled to the surface where the sun cooks them. In 2015 I hired Dwayne to run installs and stopped subcontracting the part of the work that actually decides whether the design survives a decade.
We have stayed small on purpose. Forty projects a year is what four people can build to the standard I want to put my name on. It also means the person who drew your grading plan is the person standing in your yard when the base course goes down.
Who shows up
No rotating crews, no project manager you meet once. Here is everyone on payroll and what each of them is actually responsible for.
Principal Designer · LCP holder
Draws every plan in the studio. Runs the first site walk, the concept presentation, and the HOA design-review submittal packets for NorthWest Crossing and Discovery West.
Build Foreman · 22 years in the trade
Runs the excavator and the plate compactor. Sets every boulder and every first course of segmental wall himself. Signs off on compaction before a single paver is laid.
Install Crew · Irrigation & Planting
Trench, sleeve, and commission every zone we install, then plant it. Marisol handles smart-controller programming and backflow coordination with City of Bend Water Services; Ben handles low-voltage lighting runs.
Licensing & paperwork
| Document | What it covers |
|---|---|
| LCB #9418 | Landscape Contracting Business license — the entity that signs your contract, carries the bond and the insurance. Verifiable in the Oregon LCB directory. |
| LCP (Elise) | Landscape Construction Professional, earned by exam. Oregon requires a licensed individual on payroll for every hour of landscaping work performed. That's her. |
| CCB #214776 | Construction Contractors Board license for the structural side — pergola footings, outdoor kitchen framing, walls over four feet. |
| $20,000 bond | Full LCB surety bond, at the level required of all Oregon landscape contracting businesses as of January 1, 2026. |
| $1M liability | General liability at double the $500,000 state minimum, with the LCB named as certificate holder. Certificate emailed on request, same day. |
| Workers' comp | Carried on all four employees. Nobody uninsured sets foot on your property. |
We design for the water bill as hard as we design for the view.
Elise Marchetti · Principal
Roughly 60% of Bend's municipal water goes to outdoor irrigation, and city code now bans irrigated turf in new planter strips. That's the design constraint we work inside on every plan.
In practice it means MP-rotator or drip on separate zones, hydrozoned beds so the ninebark isn't drinking on the same schedule as the sedum, and a smart controller tied to a local weather feed. Our typical full-yard install lands under 18 gallons per square foot per season — about half what a bluegrass lawn of the same footprint asks for in a Bend July.
House rules
Six to eight test holes on the first visit. If there's basalt shelf at ten inches, rock excavation appears as a real line item in the proposal — not a change order in week three.
We ask your number at the site walk. A 400 sq ft paver patio in Bend generally runs $12–$30 per square foot installed depending on stone, access, and how much rock comes out. Better to know before drafting.
Retainers run $1,800–$4,500 depending on lot size and complexity, credited in full toward the build if you hire us. You own the drawings either way.
April–May and September–October. Bend's frost-free window is roughly 100–130 days, with frosts recorded into early June. We won't plant a bed in mid-July just to close a job faster.
Hardscape and irrigation year one, planting and lighting year two, is a legitimate plan. We sleeve for the future zones during the first dig so nobody cuts a patio open later.
Two-year workmanship warranty on hardscape, one year on plant establishment, plus a walkthrough each spring for the first two seasons. Warranty terms are printed in the contract, not implied.
Where we work
We build where we can be on site the same morning something goes wrong. That's most of Deschutes County's core and nothing past it — no crews driving 90 minutes each way while your yard sits open.
Each area comes with its own homework. Westside lots bring basalt and slope. New-build neighborhoods bring architectural review committees and certificate-of-occupancy deadlines on the planter strip. Outlying parcels bring Firewise defensible-space zoning and Avion water service instead of city meters.
The studio year
Design season. Concept plans, planting plans, grading and drainage, HOA packets. Book here and you're on the spring build calendar instead of the August one.
Spring startups begin mid-March. Excavation and hardscape as soon as ground thaws; first plant deliveries after the May 15–20 frost window.
Peak hardscape. Patios, walls, kitchens, fire features, lighting. Planting pauses in the heat — we hold beds for the fall window rather than replace them twice.
Best planting window of the year: warm soil, cool air, roots establish before dormancy. Irrigation winterization runs through the last week of October.
From clients
"Elise found the basalt shelf on the first visit and priced the rock removal up front. Our neighbors got that as a $9,000 surprise from a different company. Same street, same rock."
"Our ARC kicked back two submittals from a previous designer. Sagebrush's packet cleared Discovery West review in eleven days and the planter strip passed inspection before we closed."
"July bill went from $340 to $148 after they rezoned the irrigation and pulled the lawn out front. Third summer now and the beds look better every year."
Ninety minutes on your property: site conditions, sun and wind, soil probes, your goals and your budget. No charge, no drawing yet, no pressure. You'll leave knowing what your yard actually costs before anyone bills you a dollar.
