About Ecosystem
A small Coronado company
that means it.
The Founder
Samuel Fortes.
Samuel grew up on a farm in Brazil. The instinct for what plants want — when to water, when to leave them alone, what direction the slope drains — got built in early.
His first decade of landscape work in the United States happened mostly on Coronado and Point Loma blocks: salt-air front yards, drought conversions, mature gardens that needed someone willing to prune them by hand instead of with a hedge trimmer.
Samuel started Ecosystem Landscaping & Design to keep doing the work the way it should be done: hands on every job, a small list of clients, no shortcuts that show up six months later.
Local Knowledge
What works in this salt-air pocket of San Diego.
Ten years of Coronado and Point Loma installs have taught us the things you can't learn from a plant tag: which pittosporums hold up to a January storm on the bayside, which agaves rot on the ocean side, which irrigation valves on which streets are still the originals from the 90s.
What you're hiring when you hire Ecosystem is that institutional memory — what works on this side of the bay, what to plant near a salt wind, and which yards in your block have lasted twenty years and why.
How We Work
A handful of beliefs that decide everything else.
Owner-tended.
Samuel is on every property, every install, every estimate. We turn down work we can't keep up with personally.
Local first.
Local nurseries, locally-sourced sod, plants that already grow within a mile of your block. We don't import what doesn't belong here.
Less, but right.
A simpler design installed correctly will outlast a fancy one done in a hurry. We'd rather plant nine things than thirty.
Drought-honest.
San Diego is not a wet climate. Plants that look tropical now will look stressed in August. We design for what's actually here.
Maintain by hand.
Most yards don't need more plants. They need someone willing to put hands on what's already there, every visit. That's most of our maintenance work.
Show up.
Most of the bad reviews in this trade are about disappearing. The bar is low. We just keep showing up.
Free, no-pressure consultation
Tell us about your yard.
Samuel will walk the property, listen to what you want, and tell you honestly what we'd do — and what we wouldn't.