Ivy Studio

Ivy Studio is a design-build landscape architecture studio in Canton, Massachusetts, founded and led by Vern Chellberg, who describes starting in landscape construction as a teenager and building the firm so that one studio carries a project from the first walk of the property through construction. Its HomeAdvisor profile claims 21 years of experience, and Houzz puts its typical job in the $50,000 to $500,000 range — this is high-end outdoor work, not lawn maintenance. What it actually builds shows up consistently across its listings: landscape design and planting, hardscaping and retaining walls, patios, landscape lighting, fire features and, above all, swimming pools and full outdoor-living environments. The written record is uniformly positive, and the theme homeowners return to is the single point of contact. A homeowner writing in May 2026 described a large residential project and called the team attentive from concept design through construction. In a 2025 review, a family said the studio transformed their backyard into a vacation destination and singled out communication and proactively flagged issues. A 2023 reviewer credited Vern and Jaryd with taking a difficult location, producing the design, then managing every element of the construction, and reported the project delivered on time and on budget; another 2023 comment praised Jaryd's attention to detail. Older accounts run the same way: in a 2017 HomeAdvisor review a Wellesley homeowner described a pool and outdoor living space delivered on time and within budget, and a 2019 reviewer walked through a multi-part job (fence, deck, patio, sod, irrigation, lighting, gardens) and credited the crew with diagnosing and fixing a drainage problem found mid-construction. The volume behind that is modest and spread thin: Google publishes 5 stars from 6 ratings and HomeAdvisor 5.0 from 3, and much of the written record is several years old, with the earliest account dating to 2008. The one hard thing to check before hiring is licensing. BuildZoom's unclaimed profile lists Massachusetts license #187024 as having expired on 02-20-2021 and says it re-verified that expiry on 04-11-2026, which is the directory's own reading rather than a state registry confirmation made here. Anyone signing a contract of this size should ask the studio directly for its current Home Improvement Contractor registration and check it at the Massachusetts Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation. For a homeowner planning a pool, patio or whole-backyard build in the Boston suburbs who wants design and construction under one roof, this is a credible short-list candidate. Confirm the current licence and insurance, and ask to see a recent project close to the scale of your own.