Brian Whyte Designs

The project started off pretty well: Brian was happy to come over and see our property; he listened thoroughly to our needs and ideas; and he delivered decent conceptual designs quickly.
Unfortunately things went downhill almost immediately. His proposal scoped «3 phases» of the project — but once work began he told us he was not doing all those phases. In addition, his design drawings did not reflect the actual location of our yard’s existing hardscape. (We asked him to correct the designs rather than «wing it» from inaccurate plans.)
Once work began, Brian was never on the job site himself, and in his absence his work crew took countless shortcuts. Among the problems:
When unloading our plants, the crew threw a fragile new fruit tree on the ground to break the planting pot, then hacked it away with a shovel, resulting in many broken branches.
Our landscape design is comprised mostly of drought tolerant plants, but it also includes two new fruit trees. They set up the irrigation system to water these very different plants on the exact same schedule; we had to ask them to return and install more appropriate sprinklers for the fruit trees.
We specifically asked that the original level of the dirt, where the earth meets our home’s foundation, NOT be changed — but the work crew added 8 inches of dirt. Brian initially insisted that we were wrong and that they hadn’t added the dirt, so we had to measure it and find pictures of the original site. He finally agreed to have his crew come back to fix it.
After installing irrigation pipes under our existing flagstone path, the crew reassembled the path in a new configuration to make the job easier, rather than putting it back together the way they found it. (We spent a weekend fixing this ourselves since we’d already observed their poor attention to detail in other areas of the project.)
When they initially set up the irrigation system, it completely bypassed several of the new plants they had installed. We asked them to return and fix it. They returned and made improvements, but STILL left several plants unwatered — and even worse, in some places they «fixed» the problem by simply REMOVING THE PLANTS rather than installing the correct the irrigation.
When we went to the irrigation store ourselves to fix many of the problems that the work crew had left behind, we learned that they had installed several parts incorrectly (e.g., some one-​way valves were installed backwards so that no water flowed to the plants); that in many cases they had neglected to install simple drip-​valve-​heads that keep debris from entering your water lines; and that they had installed the cheapest sprinkler heads, even where slightly better, more adjustable hardware would have made a world of difference.
While all of this has been frustrating, the most exhausting part is that rather than Brian accepting responsibility for any of the issues that were brought to his attention, everything had to be an argument with him and the burden was on us to point the deficient work quality — and in the end, we’ve spent more time fixing his crew’s work than we would have if we had simply done the entire project ourselves from the start.
Throughout this job, I will give Brian credit for listening to the problems, but it simply didn’t translate to the work accomplished and he became frustrated with having to spend time to talk about fixing his problems. Every fix created new problems. There’s a major disconnect between his workmanship and his promises. He did begrudgingly agree to compensate us for the time we spent fixing their work, but what’s the point in that when you hired «professionals».
Bottom line: BWD is good at sounding good, but the end result and experience was riddled with shortcuts, poor work quality, and bad fixes. Overall, very disappointing and would not recommend.

Mr. Whyte recently responded to me after he found my review at
and also posted a reply to my original review, which is full of false and/​or misleading information, which I feel obligated to reply and let the readers decide by themselves:
1. It is simply NOT ture that I did not contact them for follow up works and service requests. Actually, I paid them another $ 900 to do folow up works only four moths later, so Mr. Whyte also lied about the so-​called follow up service as well.
2. After paying another $ 900, things continued to get worse, so I tried to contact them again, Mr. Whyte basicly pushed it to Mr. Mele who did the work, and Mr. Mele simply said Orinda is not longer his service area. Mr. Whyte LIED about it.
3. I was forced to turn to other professionals for help and eventually re-​did everything they did more recently. EVERY professional visited the property told me that it was a «rip-​off» that they would put three controllers and low-​grade sprinkler heads and charged me $ 4500 for their works.
4. I was patient and tried to ask them to come over to take a look and provide an explaination, plus also indicating that I am willing to listen to their part of the story and may work with them again if they can set the record straight. They simply refused to even to come and take a look. So I then decided to hire another vendor and also share my experience at
5. Yes, it was a rental house and the tenant was supposed to maintain the garden according to the rental agreement, and we did hire someone to do the job. I did run into some disputes with the tenant who ended up sueing me and lost the case. Mr. Whyte got the basic fact WRONG here again.
I suggest Mr. Whyte to get the facts right first and seriously consider what I proposed in several private communications to him, or I might just goto the court in deed like he framed!

I recently hired Brian based on positive web reviews. In person and by email, at great length, we discussed my priorities for yard maintenance. There was no connection of the «service» that I received with these goals, or with the appealing stated mission of Brian Whyte Designs to have communication with clients in general. Instead of cleaning up the yard as requested, long-​tended carefully pruned plants were hacked back with no apparent logic or symmetry. And for no reason, on the second visit, new irrigation parts were installed unconnected to everything else (instead of the dead leaves still there from before the first visit getting picked up). I had no response to query emails for a month, and irregular scheduling (too long between visits). When I cancelled «service» I received only the reply that they were having «problems.» That doesn’t give me back my flowers.

We chose Brian and his team because Brian seemed incredibly pleasant, easy to communicate with and professional with a reasonable cost estimate. We were not disappointed! They mapped out our yard every step of the way, were very knowledgeable and helpful with plant choices, and were flexible when we wanted to revise the plans mid-​way through. The quality of their work was top-​notch and we are delighted with the final product. Brian and his team really seem to enjoy creating a yard to their clients’ personal tastes. Their enjoyment of the process really shines through!

Brian helped transform a very difficult weed (and trash) covered hillside into a beautiful, usable and thriving garden.
Brian definitely knows his plants. I strongly suggest going to the
plant nursery with him, discussing and viewing the plants you like
together, and then giving him the opportunity to followup with design
and execution. He is very flexible when it comes to design and I felt
he truly held our interests and intentions for our garden in his mind.
He also made himself very available during our project, which helped
make the process go smoothly.
Thanks to Brian and crew, we are enjoying our backyard everyday!
The only downside was that the work did take longer than expected – as
is the case with many contractors working on multiple jobs. Brian’s
individual portion of the job, which was focused on planting happened
smoothly, beautifully, and on schedule.
Brian also left us with a customized plant maintenance guide so we can care for the plants from here forward.

Brian transformed our side yard into a beautiful, usable garden. He has a gift for choosing the perfect plants for a space. He also has great relationships with local growers and nurseries. He’s very professional and enjoyable to work with. I highly recommend him.

Working with Brian was great. We hired him as a consultant when transforming our backyard from a weed-​infested waste to a play area for our son and raised beds for vegetables. Brian was helpful, knowledgeable, and thorough, and he kept us from making many mistakes. He was also readily available afterwards when we were doing the work and questions came up. It was a pleasure working with Brian, and I couldn’t recommend him more highly.

As a Realtor in Berkeley it’s an absolutue thrill — and a great relief — to have Brian as referral to my clients in need. When I refer clients out to another service it iultimately reflects on my professional ability and the confidence my clients have in my judgement. Whenever I recommend Brian to a client it ALWAYS makes me look better! A++

We wanted it all, but they said it couldn’t be done…
We were becoming embarrassed and getting depressed about our neglected yard. We talked to a few landscapers who told us that we couldn’t have a colorful and visually interesting landscape that was also drought tolerant, low maintenance and budget-​friendly. No landscapers seemed motivated to work with us until we met Brian Whyte.
We had a good feeling about Brian after our initial meeting and he ultimately exceeded our expectations in all respects. He was a good listener who understood our likes and dislikes, timeline and budget. He was very knowledgeable and assertive enough to recommend a design that he knew would work for us. We took a leap of faith and agreed to all his ideas. We were not disappointed.
Brian’s communication was excellent from start to finish. He kept us in the loop on the progress every step of the way. When unexpected issues arose with our existing irrigation system, Brian made suggestions for resolving the issues, while still keeping to our schedule and budget. We appreciated Brian’s pro-​active, hands-​on project management. His staff was responsible and they always left the yard tidy at the end of the workday. And Brian spent some extra time at the end of the job to make sure that we knew what plants we had and that we understood what we needed to do to maintain them properly.
Every day we walk around the yard and are delighted to see how well all the plants are flourishing. There’s always a surprise in store for us — a new bloom here, a splash of color there — the plants are growing and thriving and filling in. Our yard turned out to be exactly what we wanted — colorful, interesting and low maintenance. We actually look forward to spending more time outside, enjoying our yard, and we make a point of opening our window coverings during the daytime, to bring a little bit of the outside in. Our only regret was that we didn’t do this sooner!

Brian did an excellent job of turning our eye-​sore-​of-​a-​yard into a simple yet lovely escape. The back yard of my elderly mother’s house had been dead grass for the last few years. There were some decent plants around the border, but they were a haphazard mixture of very mature shrubs, some flowers and of course those giant agapanthas that are all over the east bay.
Brian discussed ideas with us at length, focusing on my mother’s likes and physical abilities as they related to garden use and care. His plan was easy to interpret and he included a breakdown of each step involved and their approximate cost. In this way, we could pick and choose which elements we might want to complete ourselves in order to keep costs down or perhaps wait to complete certain other components of the plan. We met with Brian at Flowerland on Solano Avenue to look at possible plant ideas.
Brian saved what he could, dividing up existing plants and encorporating them with new. He re-​figured an existing irrigation system and created a small hill and a path, making it much more interesting to look at and use.
We are very happy with his work and would highly recommend him and his crew.