Root Volume

Worker-owned landscape design/build cooperative. Serving Oakland, Berkeley, and the East Bay.

We create healing outdoor environments rooted in native plants, ecological design, and the craft of beautiful hardscaping.

08/26/2026

How do we ensure your plants are thriving? We opt for eco conscious and organic soil amendments every time!

We start with Wonder Green compost from — a vegan compost with no animal additives — as our go-to base. From there, every soil test can call for something different:

🪨 gypsum to break up compacted clay,
🌋 Azomite for trace minerals,
🪶 feather meal for a slow-release nitrogen boost
🌱 various other targeted amendments depending on what a site actually needs.

We know it's not a one-size-fits-all bag from the store. We treat soil health as an ongoing relationship between us, the site, and everything living underneath it.

Why go through all this effort? Because healthy soil pays it forward — to the plants, to the people who live there, and to the wider environment.
🌱 Healthy plants that are less vulnerable to pests and disease
🧽 A sponge-like structure that holds moisture and prevents erosion
💧 Captures, filters, and infiltrates stormwater
🌾 Suppresses weeds naturally
🌍 Captures and stores carbon

08/21/2026

This Oakland hillside was completely unusable. Deteriorating railroad tie steps, invasive ivy taking over every surface, and no way to safely access the lower portion of the property. The owners had land they couldn't access and enjoy.

A project like this requires significant design and planning time before a single stone is moved. Getting the drainage right, understanding how the slope moves water, knowing where the walls need to go and how deep the foundations need to be. We are always building with longevity in mind.

What makes a project like this particularly demanding is that no machinery can access the slope. Every piece of material on this job was carried in and out by hand. Every stone, every timber, every bucket of gravel, every tool. Stone by stone, step by step, all manual labor from start to finish.

Drainage went in before anything else, moving winter runoff through the site rather than letting it sheet down the slope and create erosion.

Then came the stone and the steps. Eucalyptus timber treads from with dry-stack stone walls edging each run, lighting built into the staircase, and terraced planting beds on both sides.

We covered the slope in woven coir erosion blanket while the native planting establishes its root system. The coir holds the soil through the wet season and breaks down naturally as the planting takes over.

What was once inaccessible hillside is now outdoor living space where the owners can relax, unwind, and immerse themselves in the nature that surrounds them.

08/20/2026

Testing soil doesn't always to be scientific.

You shake up a jar of your soil with some water, let it sit, and watch it separate into layers. Sand on the bottom, then silt, then clay, with any organic matter floating on top. It looks like a 5th grade science fair project.

We aren't out doing science fair projects for every project but we want to actually know what we're working with before we install plants.

We send soil samples out to for the real data such as pH, nutrients, texture, the whole picture.

Soil that's been properly tested and prepped makes a real difference. Plants establish faster, root deeper, and handle a dry summer way better.

Ever tried this at home? Tell us what your soil looked like. 👇

08/13/2026

Fun soil fact for the East Bay: the Hayward Fault running through Berkeley, Oakland, and Fremont doesn't just shake things up seismically,it roughly splits our soil in two.

Uphill of the fault, you're often on hard, ancient bedrock. Downhill toward the shoreline in Oakland, Alameda, Berkeley, Emeryville sits on bay fill or alluvial deposits laid over former marshland and soft bay mud. Two sites a few miles apart can be almost nothing alike underground: one rocky and well-drained, the other soft, water-saturated clay. It's a very literal reason we can't design the same garden for every East Bay lot.

Fun Fact #2: Soil in general is the second-largest carbon reserve on Earth, after the ocean. That means the ground under our feet is one of the planet's biggest climate tools, and how we treat it matters far beyond any one garden.

This month we're starting a series on soil: what we look for, what we test, what we build back, and why it's the part of the work most people never see.

Its the foundation!

08/05/2026

Over the last 3 weeks we've been talking about the materials we work with before anything new gets ordered.

👉 Broken concrete cut into retaining walls
👉 Reclaimed brick built into beautiful patios(this photo)
👉 Eucalyptus timber milled from trees removed for fire prevention
👉 Reclaimed lumber pulled from old fences and decks that still have years of life.

The reuse approach requires more thinking and more problem solving than ordering everything off a truck. It also tends to produce gardens that feel more connected to their site, more specific to their history, and more interesting to spend time in. Thats how we work!

Materials with a past bring something to a space that new materials simply haven't had time to develop yet. That's worth the extra effort every time.

Next up we'll be talking about something that happens before any of this — what's going on underneath all of it, in the soil itself.

07/29/2026

Did you know? Concrete is the most consumed human-made material in the world and is second only to water as the worlds most consumed resource. Every year, there are about 3 tons of concrete used for every single person on Earth.

Every project we take on starts with the same inventory. What concrete is coming out? What stone or brick is already on the site?

What can we reuse in the new design?

This is mostly an ecological position that is important to us. It's also how you end up with a garden that feels unique rather than assembled from a catalog. Materials that came from the site carry a connection to where they are.

There's a scrappiness to reuse material that we've come to think of as one of our strengths. It requires more problem solving, more creativity, and more attention to what each piece can actually do. The results tend to be more interesting because of it.

07/22/2026

One person's trash is another person's treasure!

When an old fence comes down or a deck gets demolished there's almost always usable lumber in it. Most crews throw it in a dumpster. We look at it differently.

Wood that has been outside for 10+ years has been through the majority of weathering. Whats left is dimensionally stable, the grain is tight, and it has developed a color and texture that new lumber won't have for another decade. We use reclaimed lumber for screen walls, raised planters, fencing, and framing wherever the structural requirements allow it.

The wood has a history. You can see it in the grain and the patina of the photos in this post. That character is part of what makes each garden feel established rather than a newly established landscape.

07/15/2026

Did you know? Eucalyptus is one of the most invasive trees in California.

It was planted across the state throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and has been competing with native species ever since. Local arborists remove thousands of trees every year as part of fire prevention and habitat restoration programs.

We source this product from . The same trees being removed to protect the hillsides we work on, are milled into lumber and put back into the landscape as steps, retaining walls, and structural elements.

Eucalyptus is exceptionally dense and naturally resistant to rot, which means it can last fifteen to twenty years in direct contact with soil without any chemical treatment. It's one of those materials where the ecological story and the practical argument point in exactly the same direction.

07/11/2026

Stone wall, bluestone terrace, cedar tub. Three materials, one perch halfway down a Berkeley Hills slope.

07/08/2026

Over the last few weeks (yes we did miss a few Wednesdays) we were talking about something that doesn't come up enough in conversations about landscaping. What happens after the crew leaves AND why the gardens we're proudest of are the ones still changing and surprising their owners years later.

👉 Our next series we're starting something new. Every project Root Volume takes on begins with a question before a single plant goes in: what materials already exist that we can build with rather than sending to a landfill?

Hint hint: That retaining wall you see was repurposed from an old sidewalk.

arden

Address

Berkeley, CA
94707

Website

https://www.rootvolume.com/

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