Merrifield Garden & Design

Merrifield Garden & Design is a Wayland company built around plants rather than patios. Katie Merrifield started it in 2004 as a small garden maintenance and planting business, and the company now describes a team of horticulturists, arborists and designers handling garden design, installation and ongoing fine-garden maintenance across MetroWest Boston — Wayland, Wellesley, Weston, Concord, Lincoln, Dover, Lexington and a dozen towns around them. What customers write about most is the design eye and the crews. In a 2023 review a homeowner said Alex Knott designed and oversaw a planting that meant ripping out a large stand of ground-cover roses, weeds and poison ivy, and that the crew arrived on time and finished the whole job in a day. Another 2023 account describes a two-year rebuild of an overgrown, overplanted front and back yard. A 2024 reviewer who has used the company for years for spring and fall clean-ups and specialised planting singled out Alyssa and Julian; a 2022 customer credited Katie J and Nils with pruning, removals and planting, and praised the quality of the plants themselves. Smaller jobs get the same treatment — a 2024 customer had bark mulch spread and called the care taken to do it right excellent. Credentials are a real part of the pitch. The Massachusetts Supplier Diversity Office lists the company as a certified Women Business Enterprise, certification 20220425, active through February 2029 — that one is confirmed against the state registry. The Houzz profile separately lists Certified Arborist, Massachusetts Certified Landscape Professional, Massachusetts Certified Horticulturalist, Accredited Organic Land Care Professional and landscape architecture among its credentials; those are the company's own entries on a directory, so ask to see the certificates. The one unhappy voice on file is not about gardening at all: a 2021 reviewer left a single star after a company truck pulled out in front of them in traffic. It is worth knowing and it says nothing about the work. Outside Google the written history is thin — a detailed 2015 Houzz account of a condo-yard planting chosen at a Wayland nursery is the only review there. For a MetroWest homeowner who wants a garden designed, planted and then actually looked after — seasonal clean-ups, pruning, fine maintenance — this is a specialist rather than a general landscape contractor. Ask which designer will lead the project and how maintenance visits are scheduled and billed.