Bio Friendly Gardens

  Bio Friendly Gardens designs and constructs gardens, landscapes, and structures of unique quality and beauty to homes and businesses throughout the San Francisco, Bay Area.

History

  Bio Friendly Gardens was established in 1995 by P. Louis Dixon. He owns and operates his business in Berkeley, CA. with his wife Haruna Kubota.

  Dixon earned degrees in Plant and Soil Science, landscape design, and natural resource management from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale in 1983. He earned a certificate in Landscape Architecture from the University of California at Berkeley in 1994, and Kyoto University of Art & Design in Japan.

  He is a trained horticulturist, forester, and entomologist. He also worked and studied as a plant biologist and insect ecologist at UC Berkeley for 12 years in the Center for Biological Control and Department of Plant Biology.

  Kubota earned a degree in mathematics from Tsuda University in Tokyo, Japan and an international business diploma from University of California at Berkeley. She is the office manager and accountant for Bio Friendly Gardens.

Services Provided

  Our services reflect our own individual interests, influences, and artistic capabilities. We implement a large variety of natural building materials to satisfy the needs of each individual client and project. We have outlined many of our services on the website. We are dedicated to promoting green building practices, water conservation, and the use of California native plants on all projects. 

Member of

 -ASLA   (American Society Landscape Architect)

 -CLCA  (California Landscape Contractors Association)

 -Ecological Landscape Associations

 -Green Roofs For Healthy Cities

How do we like to work

Our Estimating and Budget planning process:

1. If we decide that Bio Friendly Gardens is an appropriate fit for your project, we will provide you with a preliminary estimate based on initial discussions and different material choices, as well as an estimated time line to complete a project in the given amount of space.
2. You have the option of a conceptual design plan or detailed design plan (when building permits are necessary) depending on scale of project; or no plan at all, if you feel confident you can work in an interactive, natural, and artistic way.

Contract :

The State of California requires all contractors to be licensed in their respective field of work.  We are also required to carry workers compensation and general liability insurance coverage. These requirements as well as many other business operating costs, add a considerable amount of overhead cost to the overall construction process.

Therefore we are required by law to have a signed contract for every project we perform that exceeds $500.

Many times the contract changes significantly due to changes during the process of a project. These changes add a lot of time and additional materials to the overall process of completion and budget.
With respect to our contract format, we try to work on a cost plus basis (time and materials plus overhead and profit) up to the actual or estimated cost whichever is lower.
We also establish a ceiling or NOT TO EXCEED figure, unless the client adds additional work above this figure.