Stone Walls in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.

A wall in Chestnut Hill is a drainage structure before it is a stone one. Wooded hill above the Chestnut Hill Reservoir, with mature estate grounds sit on firm till on established grounds where existing planting must be protected — and that is where a wall lives or dies. We excavate to a compacted base below frost depth and build a weep-and-drainage channel behind every retaining wall, so the hydrostatic pressure of a New England winter never gets the leverage to push it out of plumb.

Turn a sloped Chestnut Hill lot into level, planted, usable ground and — built this way — it stays that way, quietly, for decades.

Freestanding fieldstone is the older language of Greater Boston, and it is what makes new work read as though it belongs. We source local stone, sort it by hand on site, and dry-stack so each stone carries load to the ones below it — no mortar hiding a mistake. The result carries the settled, irregular character of the walls already standing around Hammond Pond, Old Chestnut Hill, and the Reservoir.

Where the brick and stone estates, Tudors, and grand colonials on manicured lots call for a cleaner line — a granite-capped seat wall, a mortared wall against a foundation — we build that too, matched to the house and the planting plan.

Chestnut Hill estates carry mature, high-value landscapes — our work here is as much about protecting what exists as building what’s new.

Much of this work we build straight from a landscape architect’s drawing — batter, height, cap detail, and stone selection exactly as specified — in ongoing collaboration with Jonathan Keep Landscape Design. The Chestnut Hill site is left clean at the end of every day.