Stone Walls in Gilford, New Hampshire.

We buy from New England quarries and yards we have used for years, and we hand-pick rather than take a pallet sight unseen. For Gilford, that usually means matching color and texture to the lake houses already on the street.

A wall in Gilford is a drainage structure before it is a stone one. Lake frontage rising steeply into the Belknap range sit on granite ledge and stony till on grades that demand real retention — 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 Gilford lot into level, planted, usable ground and — built this way — it stays that way, quietly, for decades.

Between the lake and Gunstock, Gilford is all grade change — retaining walls and stepped terraces are the core of what gets built here.

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 Gilford site is left clean at the end of every day.

We would rather explain the number than defend it. In Gilford, the swing factors are access, excavation depth over granite ledge and stony till on grades that demand real retention, drainage, and protection of what is already growing on the property — the stone itself is rarely the deciding line.

You get an itemized scope after we walk the property — what is included, what is not, and where the money actually goes. No allowances that quietly become change orders halfway through.

Gilford sits in Belknap County, and most weeks we are somewhere in this pocket of Lakes Region — which means shorter travel, faster site visits, and a crew that already knows how ground behaves around here.