At the age of 22, I discovered concrete pavers. A childhood friend and I started our own little company installing driveways for brand new homeowners. At a time when the minimum wage was $5 an hour, the money we earned was unheard of. But just as important – as we branched out from pavers to trees and plants and irrigation and retaining walls and decks and basically anything we were asked us to build – the satisfaction of transforming land into a place that families and friends could spend time was deeply rewarding.

In 1993, we moved west to Vancouver, where the ground never freezes. The scope of work grew bigger, the customers grew bigger and more. But the core intention behind Landesign remained the same: provide an exceptional service and make money doing it.

We have gone on to build some of Vancouver’s most iconic public spaces, like Hastings Park Sanctuary, Second Beach, Charleson Park and most recently, we daylit Canyon Creek on the Spanish Banks coast, which had been buried for over a century.

Thinking back, I remember a hot summer day working on a hill with a panoramic view of Calgary. A young laborer in my employ had been bestowed with an enormous heart and a genius for expressing himself in the simplest terms. After a long day pushing wheelbarrows to the top of the hill, he looked out over the city and shouted across the site to me: “Hey Corbet! This is God-like!”

We like to say that even though God is the greatest landscaper, at Landesign we make miracles happen.