Koch & Associates Landscape Construction

We used Doug and his crew to redo our backyard landscape. It was taken from a beat down 70s look to a more modern and dubiously space. We now have room to sit and enjoy a fire pit, just enjoy the landscape, garden, and BBQ. It was one of the best service experiences we’ve had. The only down side was a few plants died but he replaced them cost free even a year out! Thx Doug.

If you are looking for an exceptional landscape design & construction company in the San Francisco Bay Area, look no further: The folks and Koch & Associates are it! I’ve known Doug & Pam for several years now. Their work is amongst the best in the industry as showcased on their portfolio:
They’ve been in business for over 35 years and have done landscape design and installation projects all over the bay area.

Koch & Associates completed landscape projects at two different homes for us. In both cases, we have received numerous complements from neighbors saying, «Your yard is the nicest looking on the block». The landscape ideas, quality of work, and timeliness of completing the projects exceeded our expectations both times. Due to Doug Koch’s experience and expertise, he is able to quickly gather quality people to complete projects. One project required close coordination with another contractor hired to re-​stucco our home. Doug drove all the coordination, allowing the project to be completed in a very tight time-​frame. When our stucco project required unplanned, but quickly needed, custom downspouts, it was Doug who knew who to call. Due to Doug’s positive reputation and extensive industry contacts, a sheet-​metal contractor was able to quickly make and install the new downspouts allowing the project to stay on schedule. Having Koch & Associates complete both our landscape projects was a great investment in the homes! I highly recommend them.

I have used Koch and Associates for major projects at two different homes. I have found them to be very creative on their designs, responsive and timely in their execution, and professional on the installation. They listened to my specific needs, especially and created a design that was drought-​tolerant, beautiful, and fit into my budget. I would recommend Koch and Associates and would absolutely use them for any future landscaping.

Koch & Associates Inc is a five star landscaping company. From the beginning to the completion of our project, Koch & Associates was an excellent choice for our landscaping needs. We could not have dreamed our backyard would turn out so beautiful.
Koch & Associates designed an amazing, user friendly, water friendly backyard. Our home is located in a foothills region of the SF Bay Area and never had a backyard installed. It was a mess!
Doug Koch was up to the challenge. We had many problems with our land that needed to be addressed. Doug Koch took the time to listen to our wishes, while being cognizant of our budget.
Doug Koch managed our entire project which included collaborating with our pool company. Doug Koch is an excellent project manager who works hard to please the client and to get the job done in a timely manner. Doug Koch is a perfectionist and takes pride in his business.
Moreover, Doug’s crew (including his hard working son) worked tirelessly on our yard. They were all kind and respectful to my husband and me. Many long days were put into creating our masterpiece backyard.
We interviewed multiple landscape designers for this project. But, no one got it. Koch & Associates understood and created our lovely sanctuary of a backyard.
Thank you Koch & Associates!

Koch & Associates just completed a total landscape remodel of our entire backyard. This is the fourth landscape project Doug Koch’s company has done for us in the last 27 years (three homes and a commercial property). We’re thrilled with the outcome of our backyard and it looks like it came straight out of Architectural Digest (our friends say). It turned out more beautiful than we even anticipated.
Doug Koch is very professional, experienced and has a high attention to detail. We were provided a complete set of plans and he spent the time walking us through the entire components of our landscape project. He answered questions we had before we even asked them. We found Doug Koch, Pam Jones and the entire crew great to work with and their wealth of experience was evident in every stage of the project.
Our project had a lot of components and it took three months to complete. They partially excavated our hillside to enlarge our patio area, put in extensive drainage, retaining walls, BBQ bar, fire pit, sunken spa, rock wall planters, T-​arbor, lighting, fountains, extensive paver patio, irrigation, sod and planted our hillside. Rich organic soil and amendments were worked into all the planting areas. The masonry work and overall workmanship of the entire project was excellent!
I’m a master gardener and floral arranger. There were many side projects I was working on at our house while this project was underway. I found the entire crew very courteous, arrived every day on time and they always cleaned up before leaving. They worked hard and were a pleasure to be around.
As mentioned before, this is the fourth project we’ve done with Koch and Associates. My husband and I highly recommend them. Having done an excellent job for us four times really deserves more than the 5 stars Unilocal allows us to give them.

If I rated Koch and Associates solely on the final appearance of our yard, they’d get five stars but there was far too much pain and misery along the way so we’re removing stars for the following reasons:
1.Their elevations were way off when preparing for a massive concrete pour. Our General Contractor caught the error and informed me that there wasn’t the required spacing between the proposed top of the concrete and the bottom of the stucco or siding. In some areas, Koch and Associates were off by as much as two inches and their chalk lines indicated that they intended to pour over the home’s exterior brick and siding and over several of the clean-​out drains (leaving them inaccessible).
When I brought these problems to Doug Koch’s attention, he was unyielding and defensive. After several heated phone calls, email, text messages and one especially unfriendly face to face meeting, he finally cancelled the concrete pour and had his men remove everything and start completely over so that the concrete would be at the proper height. Even after all of this, the city inspector commented that the concrete was still too high but passed us anyway since the only remedy would be to jackhammer everything out, haul it away and pour it again. I should subtract ALL of the stars just for that insanely miserable experience but then I wouldn’t be able to continue with our story:
2. Before our new house was built, we had Godiva chocolate quality dirt: rich, beautiful, aromatic, dark brown — flawless. We knew that building a new house from scratch would mean bringing in many yards of coarse gravel and crushed stone so we specifically asked over and over and over again that care be taken by Koch to purge the proposed flower beds and the raised vegetable garden of as much of these stones as possible and they completely ignored every request. They made no effort at all and I’m annoyed every time I plant a little flower in the garden and hit another big chunk of rock or concrete. Minus another star.
3. While pushing around all of the mounds of gravel with their bobcat tractor, one of their workers kept running into and knocking down the tree protection (chain link) fences. For several nights in a row, I righted the fences myself. One day, I caught Koch’s worker (again) in the act of plowing over a fence so I asked him to please replace the fence after knocking it down. He agreed but two days later the fence still wasn’t re-​erected. When I pointed it out to Doug Koch, he said he’d look into it then told me a day later that they would fix it even though his workers insist that they never knocked it down. That was a pivotal moment in my relationship with his crew and, sadly, it wasn’t the only time I caught Koch’s workers telling him that they didn’t do something they (and I) know they did. Minus TWO stars for hiring workers who are big fat liars or for creating a work environment that makes your workers feel that they need to lie to you about things… especially stupid insignificant stuff.
4. Two very expensive/​humongous pots that Koch installed on each side of a small fountain over the pool weren’t capable of holding water and had to be replaced. Three months later, the new pots were installed but a month or so after that, we had another problem: Apparently a sprinkler valve stuck and the pots filled with water causing one of them to overflow and spill dirt and water into the pool (the other pot filled with water but drained out the bottom, as it should). When I finally noticed the dirt in the pool and connected it to the overflowing pot, I texted a photo to Koch and he called me to tell me that someone would be out at my house the following week to find out why the pot wasn’t draining. The next week, two of his men came by the house and emptied the giant pot fixed the drain system then replaced the dirt and vegetation. They checked the sprinkler valve and told me that it corrected itself as soon as they opened it. Four days later, I got a very unexpected bill for $ 200 and when I questioned why we were required to pay for a service call to fix a defect in the installation of their pot, I was told that the pot repair was free and the $ 200 charge was for fixing the sprinkler valve (!). After another round of email contesting the charge, Doug Koch claimed that he’d told me about the service fee over the phone and that I’d agreed to it. After that email, we knew that someone who would lie about such a relatively minor issue isn’t someone we could negotiate with so we decided to be done with it all and just pay the bill. Minus another star for cheating us out of a measly $ 200 when we already happily paid them $ 220,000.
So, zero stars for Koch but I’ll give one back because his designer, Pam Jones, was a real joy to work with. She designed a beautiful landscape plan for us and we give her all of the credit for everything we love about our yard.

We hired Koch & Associates to landscape our backyard a couple of years ago and were happy from start to finish. They came up with a plan that we were happy with, made great suggestions and took care of everything. All workers were professional and courteous. Our backyard used to be a place to avoid. Now we go there to relax in our own oasis.