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Sandy Springs Landscaping Co

Sandy Springs · Dunwoody · Brookhaven · Roswell

Landscaping in Sandy Springs

Tell us what the yard needs and one vetted local landscaping company calls you back to price it. The quote is free and yours to keep.

Call (404) 737-3568 Use the quote form
One local landscaper
Your address goes to a single Sandy Springs landscaping company, who rings to arrange a walk of the yard.
A price in writing
A written scope covering plants, materials, grading and drainage, with a total. The figure on the page is the figure you pay.
Written for clay and shade
Piedmont soil behaviour, canopy shade, and Sandy Springs permit rules published in full, so the quote you get makes sense on the page.
Nothing to sign
The visit and the quote cost nothing and the paperwork is yours. Sit on it, compare it, or leave it.

What Gets Built

Landscaping work on Sandy Springs lots

Planting plans, grading and wall work, water routed off the property, stone patios and paths, shade beds under the oaks, new lawn, and irrigation. Every one of them priced against Piedmont clay and a wooded, sloping site.

How It Works

From a rough idea to a priced plan

Four stages, each one ending in something you can hold.

  1. Tell us what the yard needs

    Ring the number or send the quote form. The address, what you want changed, and anything the yard already does badly in a storm. Three minutes, and it costs nothing.

  2. A local landscaper calls you back

    We pass the address to one vetted Sandy Springs landscaping company, who rings you to talk through the project and arrange a time to walk the property.

  3. A walk of the site, then a written quote

    Someone reads the slope, checks where water leaves the lot, measures the sun the yard actually gets under the canopy, and comes back with a scope and a price.

  4. Check it against our numbers

    Our cost guide sets out Sandy Springs unit rates for beds, walls, drainage and patio stone, so the figure in front of you has something to be measured against.

The Ground and the Canopy

Fifty inches of rain, half an inch an hour of clay

The soil under Sandy Springs is the Cecil profile that runs across the whole Georgia Piedmont: a sandy loam surface a few inches deep over a red clay subsoil weathered out of granite and gneiss. The USDA series description classifies it as kaolinitic, which is a low-activity clay, and rates its shrink-swell potential as low. Georgia red clay does not heave. That is the part of the folklore that is wrong.

What it does instead is refuse water at rate. The same description records surface runoff as medium even though the soil is well drained, and the Metro North Georgia Water Planning District puts practical clay absorption at about half an inch of water per hour. NOAA's 1991 to 2020 normals for the Atlanta area record just under 50 inches of precipitation a year across roughly 113 days with measurable rain, with July the wettest month, and it arrives in short convective storms rather than in a steady drizzle. Everything past half an inch an hour runs across the surface, and on a lot that falls from the street toward a creek it runs the whole length of the property picking up volume.

Over the top of that sits the canopy, and Sandy Springs measures it. The city has evaluated tree canopy every two years since 2013, and its most recently published figure puts coverage at 54.5 percent for 2023 using AI-derived data. That is a heavily wooded city, and it is protected: a tree removal permit is required at 18 inches diameter at breast height, at 10 inches for dogwoods and redbuds, and at any size inside a stream buffer or the river corridor.

What that combination produces in a yard

  • A channel cut down the fall line, widening a little every summer
  • Mulch that ends up at the bottom of the slope after every serious storm
  • A low corner that stays soft for days while the rest of the yard dries out
  • Bare orange clay showing through wherever the surface layer has been worked or driven on
  • Lawn that thins in the same place every year as the canopy closes further
  • A timber wall from the original landscape, sound at the face and rotting at the buried ends
  • English ivy up the trunks of the trees the whole property depends on

Most of these are water problems wearing different clothes. The drainage page covers how the difference gets diagnosed before anyone digs.

Sunlight filtering through the leaves of a mature deciduous hardwood canopy onto a shaded woodland floor
Filtered light under a closed hardwood canopy. UGA Extension puts the practical floor for turfgrass at roughly four hours of full to filtered sun a day, and rates zoysiagrass the most shade tolerant warm-season option. Under conditions like these the honest answer is usually a woodland bed rather than another attempt at lawn.

Around the City

Where the property sits changes the whole brief

Sandy Springs covers about 37.7 square miles of Fulton County and straddles I-285, with GA 400 running north through the middle of it. Inside that footprint the ground varies a great deal, and so does what a landscape has to solve.

Along the Chattahoochee
Land within 2,000 feet of the bank sits inside the state River Corridor, with a 50-foot undisturbed buffer and a 150-foot impervious surface setback restricting concrete, gravel and pavers. Hard surfaces move uphill of the line and the ground below it becomes planting.
The creek watersheds
Nancy Creek, Long Island Creek and Marsh Creek all have city watershed studies behind them, and all city streams drain to the Chattahoochee. Designated streams carry a 75-foot buffer with the inner 50 feet undisturbed.
Perimeter Center
The business district at the I-285 and GA 400 interchange, shared with Dunwoody and Brookhaven. Residential ground nearby tends to be tighter, more overlooked, and more about screening and privacy than about acreage.
City Springs
The civic district built around City Hall on Galambos Way, with the City Green, the theatres and the amphitheatre. It is also where the permits get pulled, and where the arborists who enforce the Tree Conservation Ordinance are based.
The wooded preserves
Big Trees Forest Preserve on Roswell Road runs to 31 acres and is a member of the Old-Growth Forest Network. Lost Corner Preserve covers 24 acres of woodland on former farm ground. Both are a fair guide to what this ground grows when left alone.
The 1980s subdivisions
The single largest slice of the city's housing was built between 1980 and 1989, and the median year of construction across all housing here is 1988. Those landscapes are now nearly forty years into a canopy that has doubled in size, which is why so many of them need light reassessed rather than replanted.

Dunwoody, Brookhaven, Roswell, Vinings and the rest of the ring each have their own page, and their own county rulebook. Every area we cover is listed here.

On the Paperwork

What a landscaping quote should contain

Landscape quotes are hard to compare because two of them for the same yard can describe different work at similar prices. These are the lines that make a quote readable.

  • Quantities you could check with a tape. Square feet of bed, linear feet of drain, face square feet of wall, square feet of paving, plant counts and sizes.
  • The base section under anything hard. Excavation depth, aggregate, and how it gets compacted. On clay this is most of the cost and it is invisible when finished.
  • Drainage, named. Behind every wall and under every patio, with a destination for the water that is legal as well as downhill.
  • Permits and who pulls them. Land disturbance, and any tree submittal, which on construction work is a Tree Conservation Plan rather than a removal permit.
  • Access assumptions. Whether a machine can reach the work, because barrowing material down a steep side yard changes every labour line.
  • Spoil and reinstatement. Where the excavated clay goes, and what happens to the lawn the machine crossed.
  • Warranty terms. On plants and on workmanship, with the duration and what voids them.

The Sandy Springs cost guide puts numbers against every line, and the budget estimator gives a range to hold a quote up against before anyone walks the property.

Straight answers

What does landscaping cost in Sandy Springs?
It depends entirely on which scope you are buying, because these are different trades. Bed renovation and replanting commonly runs $14 to $30 per square foot. Yard drainage sits around $40 to $85 per linear foot for a properly built French drain. Segmental retaining walls run roughly $40 to $70 per face square foot under four feet, and more with geogrid reinforcement above that. Paver patios land around $22 to $40 per square foot, natural stone higher. A whole back yard combining drainage, a wall, a patio and planting frequently lands somewhere between $29,000 and $55,000. The cost guide breaks every line down.
Do I need a permit to landscape my own yard?
Often, and more often than in neighbouring cities. Sandy Springs generally requires a land disturbance permit once 1,000 square feet or more of ground will be disturbed by grading, clearing, paving or grubbing, and states that a permit may still be needed below that where the work requires erosion control measures or changes topography or stormwater drainage patterns. Separately, removing a tree at 18 inches diameter at breast height or larger needs a tree removal permit, and dogwoods and redbuds need one at 10 inches. The contractor handles both as part of standard scope, but they add time to the schedule.
Why does water sit in my yard when the soil is meant to drain well?
Because infiltration rate and drainage class are different things. The Cecil-type soil under most of the Georgia Piedmont is described in the USDA series description as well drained, yet the same description records surface runoff as medium, and the Metro North Georgia Water Planning District puts practical clay absorption at about half an inch of water per hour. An Atlanta summer storm delivers that in fifteen minutes. Everything past the absorption rate becomes surface flow, and on a sloping lot it collects wherever the grade flattens.
Can anything grow under my oaks?
A great deal, provided it is not a lawn. UGA Extension puts the practical floor for turfgrass at about four hours of full to filtered sun a day, and rates zoysiagrass as the most shade tolerant warm-season grass and the best one to grow beneath mature trees, holding acceptable quality down to around four to four and a half hours of filtered light. Below that, no turfgrass is a fair fight. Woodland beds of shade-tolerant shrubs, ferns and groundcovers are the answer, and they cost less to keep than a lawn that has to be replaced every third year.
When can I water a new landscape?
Whenever it needs it, for the first month. Georgia law limits outdoor landscape irrigation to the hours between 4 p.m. and 10 a.m., but the statute exempts irrigation of new and replanted plant, seed or turf during installation and for 30 days immediately following the date of installation. Drip irrigation, soaker hoses and hand watering with an automatic cutoff carry no time limit at all.
How do I get a quote?
Call (404) 737-3568 or use the quote form with the address and what you have in mind. A local landscaping company walks the property, reads the slope and the drainage path, counts the light the yard really gets under the canopy, then puts a written scope and a price together. None of that is charged for.

Find out what the yard would cost

Call (404) 737-3568 or use the quote form, and a Sandy Springs landscaping company prices the work at no charge.

Call (404) 737-3568 Get a free quote