Actaeon provides full-service landscaping — including design, planting, grading, and seasonal cleanup — for residential and commercial properties in Washington DC, Maryland, and Virginia.
The best landscapes look effortless — the illusion of good design, not its absence: every path curves where it does for a reason, every plant is where it is because it will thrive there, and every grade is pitched because of what it does with water.
What we mean by landscaping
Landscaping at Actaeon is four things working together: horticulture (the right plants in the right places), grading (water moving where you want it to go), hardscape (paths, walls, patios, and terraces integrating with plantings), and maintenance (the long game — because landscapes are grown, not installed).
We don't just stick plants in the ground. Every project starts with how the space will actually be used, how water moves through it, what the sun exposure is at different times of year, what the soil is like, and what neighboring properties contribute or constrain. From there, design follows use.
Services within landscaping
Landscape design
Full design documents for new construction, renovations, and whole-yard redos. Planting plans, grading plans, hardscape integration, lighting, irrigation. For most residential projects, design is included in the project cost rather than billed separately.
Plant installation
Trees, shrubs, perennials, ornamental grasses. We source plant material from regional growers, not chain retailers — better stock, better root systems, and cultivars suited to DMV conditions.
Sod and lawn installation
New lawn installation, lawn renovation, or sod repair after construction damage. Proper grading and soil prep before sod goes down — not as an afterthought.
Mulching
Seasonal mulching with hardwood, pine bark, or dyed mulch. Applied at the correct depth, not piled against trunks where it causes rot.
Tree care
Pruning, removal, cabling, health assessment. Safety-first, canopy-preserving approach. We maintain the trees you want and remove the ones that need to go.
Outdoor living integration
Patios, fire features, seating walls, outdoor kitchens, built-in lighting. Where landscape and hardscape come together, we handle both as one project rather than juggling subcontractors.
How we think about design
Most landscape problems are design problems disguised as maintenance problems. A planting bed in the wrong spot fights the owner every year until it dies. A grade that slopes the wrong way needs drainage work that wouldn't exist if the grade had been right. A path that's where people don't actually walk becomes overgrown because nobody uses it.
Good design is site-specific. Every property has a logic — the angles of the house, the locations of windows and doors, the sight lines from inside, the sun paths, the way wind moves across the lot, the neighboring structures. Good landscaping reads all of that and works with it, not against it.
