The studio behind the drawings
We draw gardens, and we build them ourselves.
Rowan Yard is a small design-build studio in South Phoenix. The hand on the pencil is the hand on the shovel — one crew, from the first survey to the last plant set in the ground.
Drawn on 37th Way
What we hold to
Five habits we don’t bend on.
Paper first
Nothing gets trenched until it has been drawn to a quarter-inch scale and signed off. You approve the garden on the table before it costs a single stone.
One crew, start to ground
The people staking your site are the ones who drew it. No drawing gets lost in a handoff between a design firm and a subcontractor who never read it.
Plant what belongs
Palo verde, ironwood, ocotillo, agave, brittlebush — Sonoran natives set in amended soil so they root deep and drink little through a Phoenix July.
Honest material, used well
Dry-stacked flagstone, decomposed granite, weathering steel, rough cedar. We would rather use less and use it right than fill a yard with things that fade by the second summer.
We don’t vanish at the invoice
A full season of check-ins while the garden takes hold. A yard is a slow thing; we stay long enough to watch it root.
Why we work this way
A garden built too fast reads that way in three summers.
So we build for the long view — grade that carries the monsoon runoff, roots amended into caliche, stone stacked to hold without mortar. The kind of yard that looks more settled every year, not less.
— The Rowan Yard crew
The material list
What ends up in your yard — and where it comes from.
| Material | Source & grade | Where it lands |
|---|---|---|
| Arizona flagstone | Northern-Arizona quarries, dry-stacked, no mortar | Patios, seat walls, and steps that hold without concrete |
| Decomposed granite | Apache brown & Madison gold, ½″ minus, compacted | Paths and courtyard floors underfoot |
| Weathering steel | Raw Corten plate, left to patina in the sun | Planter edging and raised beds that rust to a warm brown |
| Rough-sawn cedar | Framed on site, oiled, not painted | Ramadas and shade structures |
| Sonoran natives | Palo verde, ironwood, ocotillo, agave, brittlebush | Planted into amended native soil, deep-rooted and low-water |
| Drip irrigation | Inline emitters on a smart timer | Every plant on its own line — water where the roots are |
Down at the yard
A drafting table, a stack of flagstone, and a truck.
We started Rowan Yard because too many Phoenix gardens were drawn by one company and butchered by another. We wanted the drawing and the digging to belong to the same hands.
The studio sits on South 37th Way, a working yard as much as an office — pallets of Arizona flagstone, a rack of ocotillo canes, and a drafting table by the window where the plans get drawn at a quarter-inch scale. Come by and you’ll likely find someone with granite dust on their boots.
We keep the roster small on purpose — a handful of people who draw, grade, stack, and plant, so the person who set a boulder is the person who’ll answer when you call about it. No layers, no lost drawings.
You’ll find us Monday through Friday, 10 to 4. Bring photos, a rough budget, and the one corner of the garden you already love — we build outward from there.
One studio, drawn and built
Come walk your yard with us.
Book a site visit and we’ll read your ground in person — light, grade, soil, and the corner you already love — then hand you a plan you can build from.