Everything Nettle & Slate makes starts with the same two-hour Site Read — soil probe in the clay, pencil on a clipboard, the afternoon glare mapped where it actually lands. From there you choose how far to go: a drawing, a planting, a whole slate build. Every service below is priced per project, no hourly meter running.
Belle Meade, Sylvan Park, East Nashville and 12South homeowners come to us for the same thing — one small studio that draws the plan and then shows up to dig it. The Read fee is credited straight back toward whatever you build.
// The full list
Take one line item or the whole run. Design fees stand on their own; build numbers arrive as a written estimate before a single pallet of slate is ordered.
Two hours on your lot with a soil probe and a sketchpad. We taste the drainage, trace the sun path across the day, name the trouble spots out loud, and leave with your wish list in pencil. Every project begins here, and the fee comes off your plan.
Book a ReadA scaled drawing you can hold up against the yard — beds, paths, patio footprint, sightlines from the kitchen window, and where the water goes after a July downpour. Includes two rounds of revisions and a table-side walkthrough with material samples.
Start a planA season-by-season list of plants that belong in Middle Tennessee clay — coneflower, aromatic aster, oakleaf hydrangea, sedges for the wet corner — laid out in drifts that read from the porch and feed the swallowtails. We source from regional growers and set every plant ourselves.
Plant with usCleft slate terraces, dry-stack walls, gravel courtyards, and the quiet grading that keeps water off your foundation. We run the crew, the permits, and the deliveries, and we walk the site with you at every course so nothing gets buried you can’t live with.
Talk through a buildFor the lot that pools at the back door and runs a river down the drive. We cut swales, plant rain gardens that drink the runoff, and re-shape the grade so the storm finds the low ground on purpose. Often the first thing we tackle before anything pretty goes in.
Fix the waterFor gardens we’ve built and want to see hold. A visit each season to cut back, divide, mulch, and coax the young meadow through its first hard summers — the part where a native planting quietly turns from patchy to full. No mow-and-blow, just the finicky care that keeps roots deep.
Keep it thriving// On every invoice
No matter which line you choose, the same rhythm holds — the people who draw it are the people who dig it, and you see the shape of the thing before it’s permanent.
Rae draws, Miller builds. From the first soil probe to the last slate course, you’re not handed off to a subcontractor you’ve never met. Two people, your whole garden.
Not a vague “sometime in spring.” You get real start and finish dates you can watch progress against, and a call if the weather moves them.
Every build number arrives in writing — materials, labor, management — before we order a pallet. What you sign is what you pay, barring changes you ask for.
// The stuff itself
Every material has to survive a Nashville August and still look right in year ten. That rules a lot out. Here’s what earns a place in our gardens.
A split face holds grip when it’s wet and reads as stone, not tile. Set true, course by course, on a compacted base that won’t heave.
Grown within a few counties, so they hit the ground already used to our clay and heat — less water, no chemical babysitting, and the goldfinches follow.
No mortar to crack. Gravity and a good hand do the work, and the wall breathes so water moves through instead of pushing it over.
The unglamorous half — the pitch and the drainage nobody sees. Get it right and the pretty part lasts. Get it wrong and it all slumps by spring.
// When to start what
Timing changes what a season is good for. Call any time of year; we’ll slot your project where the weather and the roots actually want it.
The best months to draw. Beds are bare, bones are visible, and dry-stack stonework goes in without trampling anything green. Book now for a spring install.
Cool soil, steady rain, long light. Perennials and shrubs go in with a full season to root before the heat lands. The busiest stretch on our calendar.
Too hot to plant well, perfect to build. Terraces, walls, swales and regrades get done while the ground is dry and firm underfoot.
Our quiet favorite — warm soil, cooling air, and roots that dig in all winter. The ideal time to sow a meadow or fill in a native border.
Book the $650 Site Read and we’ll bring the soil probe, the slate samples, and the pencils. You bring the coffee — and the fee comes off whatever you decide to build.
