English Stone · Twin Cities · Built for Minnesota
Stone & landscape,
set by hand.
Patios, plantings, retaining walls, and outdoor living. Landscapes built for Minnesota, across the Twin Cities.
Patios, plantings, retaining walls, and outdoor living. Landscapes built for Minnesota, across the Twin Cities.
Plantings, patios, retaining walls, hearths, and outdoor living, all laid by the same crew to the same standard. Hardscape and landscape from one team.
Fieldstone, bluestone, and large-format paver patios laid on engineered base, with joint lines drawn by eye rather than by shortcut.
Dry-stack, mortared, and engineered block walls that step with the land and hold their line through every thaw.
Wood-burning hearths, gas firepits, and full chimney builds set in basalt, limestone, or reclaimed brick, detailed for the long evening.
Plantings, ground cover, edging, and full outdoor rooms, stitched into the patio with matching stone and proper footings.
Full-home veneer, chimney restoration, and tuckpointing on houses built a century before us, finished to the joint.
The work has to survive a Minnesota year. The frost line. The freeze-thaw. A foot of snow on a three-course wall in January. Every base, every joint, every capstone is detailed for the place it stands, and most crews never mention it in the bid.
Over-dug to the frost line. Geotextile, then open-graded base aggregate, then crushed and compacted in lifts. The surface gets set once.
Polymeric sand where the frost will hit it, mortar where the weight will ride on it. Every joint detailed for the freeze-thaw that takes it apart on a cheaper job.
Pinned, mortared, and pitched to drain. Water running off the wall is the thing that saves it. The cap does the saving.
From the first walk of the yard to the final walkthrough, your dedicated project manager runs every step. Each has its own rhythm.
Your dedicated project manager meets you in the yard. You walk the slope, name the trees worth keeping, and talk about how the evening light falls.
We translate the visit into a plan you can read. Material, elevation, joint pattern, and the number. Revisions happen on paper.
Our crews cut, set, and finish. Your project manager is on site. You see progress every day the weather allows, and a clean yard every night.
Final walkthrough with your project manager. Written warranty, a handshake, and a clean yard. We leave it better than we found it.
Every course was set by hand, block by block, off a string line and checked to the level as the wall climbed. It is built the way a wall that has to survive Minnesota is built — drainage rock and fabric behind it, compacted base under it, a cut cap on top — then stepped down into the grade at the low end so it disappears into the lawn instead of stopping dead.
The hill stays put. The yard above it is flat, sodded, and safe for kids, and the garden beds at the far end finally sit on level ground. The whole build was walked at closeout.
The same crew, the same standard, every time.
The team at English Stone was fantastic. From the initial consultation to the final walkthrough, they were professional, communicative, and truly invested in bringing our vision to life. The craftsmanship on our new patio and retaining wall is outstanding.
We hired English Stone for a full backyard transformation and could not be happier. The team was patient, creative, and honest throughout the entire process. The quality of the stonework is exceptional and the crew was respectful of our home every single day.
The team at English Stone is truly professional. They took the time to understand exactly what we wanted and delivered beyond our expectations. Our new outdoor fireplace is the centerpiece of our backyard and we are already planning the next project with them.
Jack Eickhof grew up in Grand Forks, North Dakota, and moved to Minnesota in 2013 to attend the Carlson School of Management at the U of M. He graduated in 2017 with a degree in finance and has since built his career around entrepreneurship and the exterior trades.
His appreciation for craftsmanship began early. His father worked as a contractor for more than forty years, giving Jack firsthand exposure to the care, problem-solving, and attention to detail required to do quality work. He later owned and operated a painting company, gaining valuable experience working with homeowners and managing projects that improve and protect their properties.
At English Stone, Jack enjoys helping homeowners transform their outdoor spaces and seeing the dramatic difference between where a property starts and the finished result. He believes a well-designed and well-maintained landscape can completely change how a family experiences their home.
Jack lives in Victoria with his wife and their boy-girl twins. Outside of work he enjoys biking, running, spending time outdoors, maintaining the landscape at his own home, and steadily expanding his knowledge of Minnesota trees and plants.
