No account manager, no subcontractor you never met. The hands that press a soil probe into your yard on the first morning are the same ones setting the last course of slate — and mulching the beds a year later while the roots take hold.
Belle Meade to East Nashville homeowners keep our number because the person who drew the plan is the one who answers the phone.
// Where it started
Rae Kesler was drawing gardens for a firm that never let her build them; Miller Ovsak was building patios he wasn’t allowed to change. They met on a Sylvan Park job where the plan called for turf on a slope that shed water like a roof — and neither of them was allowed to fix it. That August, standing over a swath of brown, brittle grass, they decided the drawing and the digging shouldn’t belong to two different companies.
Nettle & Slate is the studio they wished they’d worked for: small enough that the pencil and the shovel are held by the same hands, patient enough to wait out the third summer when a native meadow finally fills in and starts to hum.
est. 2019 · founded_by: Rae Kesler & Miller Ovsak
// What we hold to
Anyone can make a yard look full on install day with nursery-fat annuals. We choose plants that knit their roots into the clay and get better every August — so the garden you love in year three needs less water, less fuss, and no chemical babysitting.
Before we draw a single bed we read where the July downpour actually runs. Swales, grading, and gravel do the quiet work of keeping rain off your foundation and in the roots — the part nobody photographs and everyone feels.
A plan drawn by someone who’ll never lift the stone is a wish list. We draw knowing what a slate course weighs and where the truck can back in, so what’s on paper is what ends up in your yard.
We take a handful of Nashville gardens a season. That means we’re on site the morning the mountain mint goes in and the day the first slate is set true — not managing your project from a spreadsheet across town.
// The whole practice
There’s no front desk between you and the work. When you call, you get Rae or Miller — and when we build, we build alongside a small circle of masons and growers we’ve worked beside since the first job.
Designer · she draws
Spends the first visit crouched over a soil sample, sketching where the afternoon glare lands. Draws the site plan and planting scheme, and can name every native she specifies and why it belongs in your corner of Nashville.
Builder · he digs
Shows up with slate samples and the truth about drainage. Runs the grading, the hardscape, and the calendar you can watch progress against — and walks the site with you at every course so nothing gets buried you can’t live with.
// The straight version
Book the Site Read and we’ll bring the soil probe, the slate samples, and the pencils. You bring the coffee — and we’ll stand together in the shade you don’t have yet.
