Katharine Webster Inc.

Kate Webster is an absolutely fabulous landscape architect and I relish each opportunity I get to work with her. Kate's style is superb, her follow-through excellent and her attention to detail unmatched. Kate delivers a sublime product again and again and I love referring her to even my most demanding clients. She has that rare combination of skill and design savvy that nearly guarantees a 5 star customer experience every time. In fact I was recently reminded of this when I overheard some new clients talking about her. They literally went on and on! I highly recommend Kate Webster.

Within the context of our work as architects, creating a strong visual and physical connection between the interior spaces and outdoor areas is very important to our projects. Having an excellent landscape design team involved in the project is a real asset. Kate and her office have been that added value on a few of our projects including work in my own garden. I would highly recommend her to my colleagues and homeowners.

I hired Kate to work with an architect and a landscape contractor to identify the appropriate trees to block our property from several neighbors. The project was complex for a variety of reasons and required all parties to share their knowledge and work to solve problems that were inherent due to the site conditions. Kate's guidance on the appropriate trees that would thrive in a challenging environment as well as her follow up with both the architect and the landscape contractor were critical in the success of this project. Kate stayed within the proposed budget and she was a real pleasure to work with during the whole process. I would highly recommend Kate for any project that requires the skills of a landscape designer.

We first became aware of Kate's work when we attended a house walk and were so impressed with the outdoor space she had created. We were in the process of completing a total renovation of our home and knew the outdoor space needed a complete renovation too. We met with Kate and began the process of first redesigning the front garden and then adding a small pool and landscape to the back garden. The results exceeded our expectations. Kate took our plain Jane space and turned it into a lush, drought tolerant oasis. Her work really transformed our home and made our outdoor space quite special.

Kate was referred to me by a friend who had worked with her on a much larger project with a bigger budget. When I first me with Kate I thought that the scope of our project and budget might be too small for her. She not only agreed to work with us but figured out how to make the project happen within our budget. The end result is that we replanted our entire garden and brought it back to life. Kate is a very talented and creative landscape designer. She has a positive "can do" attitude and is fun and easy to work with. I would highly recommend Kate to any one looking to start from scratch or to redo their landscape as we did.

We hired Kate to transform the front and rear yards of this Presidio Heights home in 2014: http://www.bartlettre.com/property/3636-Clay-Street-San-Francisco-Presidio-Heights/13 Kate's "staging" design was perfect to highlight the beauty, space and function of the yards. Kate is very knowledgeable and professional and was a pleasure to work with from concept through maintenance including a very exciting and amicable resident raccoon relocation.

We hired Kate on the recommendation of our architect concurrent with a major renovation of our home. We had a large significantly sloped backyard that we never used and Kate spent a lot of time working with us to first understand our needs and desires and then to design a beautiful two-leveled backyard. She designed a retaining wall and patios, helped us select many trees and created lovely landscaping. She also worked at the front of our house to create fantastic landscaping around a newly installed driveway and raised planter beds. Kate was a true pleasure to work with and we are thrilled with the results 6 years later. She has great design vision and is unbelievably detail oriented. She created plans that showed each piece of the new stonewalls and caps and pavers and made sure that the plans were correctly implemented by the landscape contractors. We highly recommend her.

We hired Kate to create a garden that would meet all of the goals for our family, from preserving my husband's beloved apple and plum trees, to adding Meyer lemon trees and a compost pile for me, and creating play spaces for our young children. On visiting our garden, Kate immediately pointed out a couple of eyesores that we would need to disguise. We had lived with the garden for such a long time that we had stopped noticing our neighbors' ugly garage and support for their bamboo. She held our hands as we reluctantly agreed that if we wanted more light in the garden in order to support a vegetable garden, we would need to remove an old jacaranda tree that shaded much of the garden. Once that tree was removed, the project design moved ahead efficiently. We graded the garden into three terraces, made the entrance to the garden more effective, and replanted everything except for two fruit trees. We've been thrilled with the end result! Our kids have grown up in the garden, with our babies using the small water feature as a pool and later a fishing pond, using the rocks and rock wall as launch pads, and playing in the willow tepee. Our son loves eating the sugar snap peas we plant every year in the garden boxes, and the kids can't wait to check for strawberries and blueberries when those are in season. We don't have to worry about the kids in the garden, because Kate made sure that all plants were non-toxic. We can't recommend Kate highly enough.

Kate was a joy to work with on both our initial landscape install and a recent refresh. Kate invested the right amount of time to listen to our project desires and implemented her program quickly and with outcomes better than expected. I highly recommend Kate for projects as she is resourceful, talented/creative, and a pleasure to work with.

Kate and her team did an excellent job for us, turning our multi level space into a single terraced garden with a European feel with lots of color and texture, which is exactly what we asked her to accomplish. She asks many questions until she is completely clear with what you want and what you want to spend. She is direct--yet gracious and diplomatic-- and very, very honest. She also completed our job in a timely manner, and managed our expectations along the way. She incorporated a fire pit, French trellis, mirrors, and a fountain to achieve the look we wanted. She personally supervised much of the work herself, so nothing was left to chance, and that is quite rare in this industry, and contracting in general. She has an amazing network of resources and contractors, who go out of their way to perform their best for her. I interviewed more than 25 landscape designers, and Kate was truly the right choice. I heartily recommend her.

We hired Kate to improve the landscaping in our backyard in San Francisco. Having completed a renovation in 2010, we rushed to complete the landscaping at that time and ended up with something we weren't using. Kate was instrumental in fixing this for us at a reasonable price, well under our budget. Perhaps her greatest strength in our case was really understanding how we wanted to use the yard. She was able to make recommendations that made a lot of sense given the goals we laid out, and honestly that we wouldn't have considered on our own. We couldn't be more pleased with her work, and currently are planning on using her again on another project we have in Wine Country.

Kate provided invaluable design and practical counsel on our garden project. She was thoughtful, easy to work with, and incredibly knowledgeable. She offers a wonderful balance of creativity and practicality - important since we didn't want our garden to look great for 2 months and then become a nightmare to maintain. I would work with Kate again in a heartbeat. . . she is a true pro.