Original
Every garden is drawn for its own ground — grade, light and water resolved on paper before a stone is cut.
Since 1978
Building Private Landscapes
Four Decades of Gardens, Water and Stone
Experienced
Four decades of estate work, exhibition installations and restoration, with the trades in hand to build all of it.
Enduring
Dry-set walls, gravity-fed water and plantings chosen for what they become in thirty years, not thirty days.
Four decades of gardens, water and stone made by the hands that drew them
The first job was in 1978. Collab Create began as a garden-art gallery and grew into a practice that designs and builds the whole landscape: estate frontages and courtyards, carved basalt and cast fountains, dry-set terraces, mosaic wall water, and one-off stone furniture that exists nowhere else. Excitement exists in every kind of ground we are handed — coastal bluff, hillside, walled courtyard, or a flat suburban lot that nobody thought could hold water. Drawings are worked and re-worked until the grade, the sightlines and the water route agree with each other, and then the same hands that drew them cut the stone.
Collab Create is known for water that keeps running. Fountains are built gravity-fed and serviceable, with basins sized for evaporation and pumps reachable without lifting a terrace — which is why installations from the 1990s are still working today.
Over four decades of building gardens for a grateful clientele, Collab Create has developed a following that comes back for the second house, the third garden, and eventually their children's. Call to walk your property and talk about what it could be.
The work, in order
How a garden gets made
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Walk the ground
Grade, light, drainage and whatever is already growing. Every property is handed to us in a different condition — coastal bluff, hillside, walled courtyard, or a flat lot nobody thought could hold water.
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Draw it
Grade, sightlines and the water route are worked and re-worked on paper until they agree with each other. Nothing is cut before the drawing is settled.
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Cut and set
The same hands that drew it cut the stone. Walls are dry-set where the ground allows, so they can be lifted and reset rather than broken out.
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Leave it serviceable
Fountains are built gravity-fed, with basins sized for evaporation and pumps reachable without lifting a terrace. That is why installations from the 1990s are still running.
In their words
Your dedication for doing all-time quality work is definitely responsible for the success of our design. … Your ability to coordinate and supervise all of the trades involved was not an easy task, but The George Phillip Group capably met the challenge.
Cortland Paul, FASLA · The Peridian GroupLandscape architect, writing to George Zweigle
The estate was the first built, completed and sold in Lantern Bay and the landscaping was one of the main focal points. We have found that where we needed the best in the quality of design and construction in our custom residential projects, we called The George Phillip Group to deliver it.
Bob Osborne · Robert E. Osborne Company, Laguna HillsDeveloper, Lantern Bay at Dana Point
Both quoted from a published feature on The George Phillip Group, the practice behind Collab Create.
The question that opens every first meeting
What are you hoping to create?
Tell us about the ground you have. We read every message ourselves and will be in touch shortly. Prefer to talk? Call (208) 710-0787.