Our Company Heritage

We are and always have been a small company with an emphasis on quality workmanship and customer satisfaction.  Hurth Construction, Inc. was incorporated in 1994.  The vast majority of our work is residential and commercial waterscape and landscape construction, but we also provide landscape maintenance services for our regular clients.

Our company is owned and operated by Doug & Lisa Hurth.  We are a small company run by a handful of serious pond specialists and enthusiasts.  We all love the water garden industry, we all have ponds at home, we all wear multiple hats and perform any and all tasks that need to be done and we all know the ins-and-outs of the water garden lifestyle and can talk with you for hours about your pond.  Please give us a chance to introduce you to the life changing beauty and peacefulness of a water garden.  Dan Dumas is our Operations Manager, and he has a hand in almost everything that goes on here.  In addition to operations, Dan is also our sales, marketing, and public relations manager.  Many of you will get the opportunity to meet Dan at your own home when he arrives for a sales and design consultation.  Dan has had an eye for layout and design from the beginning and he personally designed our website and much of our advertising that you see.  While he does not have an extensive landscape background, he has been studying hard and he has really caught on to the art of water garden and landscape layout and design and uses his creative eye almost daily to design unique backyard paradises for our clients.  Carrie Dumas is our retail and office manager and she handles everything that goes on in our store and offices.  She does it all; from the accounting and bookwork to hand selecting the beautiful fish that we sell in our store.  Carrie is a retail management professional and also an avid water gardener with plenty of hands on pond, fish, and plant experience to make your trip to the
HURTH Waterscapes Retail Showplace a satisfying, enjoyable and educational experience.  When you stop in to our store, please be sure to find Carrie or Dan and ask them any questions that you might have regarding your pond and waterfall.  They are both very knowledgeable and always eager to talk about ponds.  Chances are, when you call our offices, you will either speak to Doug, Dan, or Carrie, your personal waterscape and landscape specialists.  We are always here to serve you!

We feel that being a smaller, tightly held company gives us certain advantages over the larger companies.  We usually have only one or two projects going at any one time, which allows us to more closely monitor each project.  We can be more flexible and creative when it comes to planning, designing and implementing a landscape.  We will work closely with each client to be sure that their landscape is their own, not just a cookie cutter replica of the landscape down the street.  We will treat your landscape project as if it were our own.  And last, but certainly not least, we will be personally committed to successfully completing your project in a manner that best suits your needs and desires.

Years Bring Change

In 1994 we installed our very first naturally-balanced ecosystem pond and judging from the absolute delight and excitement that our clients and all of their neighbors felt toward the new pond, we knew that we were on to something big.  From that day forward, we made it our mission to become the water garden experts in Wisconsin.  We have educated ourselves and continually educate ourselves on both artistic design principals and intricacies as well as all of the latest construction theories and techniques.  We have been involved in many projects, both large and small and have installed many different styles and types of ponds and waterfalls and our enthusiasm hasn't waned one bit.  As a matter of fact, I think that we are more excited now than ever.  The water garden industry just keeps getting bigger and better and we try very hard to remain on the cutting edge.

By 2006, after years of being asked where to go to buy pond related products, we decided that it was time to give our customers a place to shop for their pond products.  We bought our building at 150 N. Riverside Drive in Saukville and opened a water garden and landscape retail showplace where people can go to experience the lifestyle and purchase any and all pond related products that they need.  We still called our company Hurth Construction, Inc. and we called our new retail store Ponds Plus.  The retail store was a great success and we got loads of compliments from clients, new and old.  After much debate and since now, eight years after taking the plunge, the majority of our work is installing and maintaining water gardens, we decided that it was time to change our name.  We sensed confusion over the two different names and the fact that people always thought construction meant that we built houses.  We looked at our letterhead and realized that inadvertently, we had made this more confusing than it had to be.

So we kicked off the 2007 season with our new company name,
HURTH Waterscapes.  We received some great customer feedback and some new recognition due to our name change.  We feel that the new name portrays our specialty and our focus very well.  Over the 2007 season, everyone grew accustomed to the new name and now it feels like a natural fit.  2007 was a season of other changes for our company as well.  We finally put into writing our “Best in the Industry” 10 year workmanship warranty.  We had been standing behind our top quality work since we started in the landscape industry, but now we put it in writing.  This new warranty seemed to be a real hit with our prospective clients, but it wasn’t such a hit with our competitors!  Evidently our competitors thought that this warranty was just crazy, and I suppose it would be crazy for companies out to make a quick buck, but we plan on being here for the long run, and to stand behind our work and serve our clients needs seems like an easy decision.  In 2007 I made the commitment to personally work in the field as the crew foreman.  I had always overseen our projects, but this was the first year in quite a few years that I had actually worked each day all day with the crew.  I had battled for years to find the right foreman who cared about beauty, quality, our clients and efficiency, but I never found that person.  I had come to the conclusion that very few people care about artistic creativity and quality of product the way that I do, so the clear choice was for me to do it myself.  I am the one with the artistic vision and no one cares more about quality and customer satisfaction than I do.  I have to say that I had a great season.  Sure, it was a lot more physically demanding than my sales and office work that I had grown accustomed to, but it sure was worth it.  I had a great season, the clients received a great product and our artistry and efficiency has grown as well.  Being in the field every day allowed me time to really think about the ponds that we build and the way that we build them.  I was able to become more creative, take the time to do the little things that make a big difference, and improve our processes and procedures as well.  2007 was also the first year that we were able to sell a good quantity of work for the winter months.  In the past we had plowed snow which turned out to be a rather tedious break-even kind of process for us.  In 2007, in lieu of snow removal, we implemented a winter work discount program to encourage people to purchase our services to be performed during the winter months.  This worked out just great, and even now, in February, as I type this, we are in the middle of a pond and patio installation job.  It has been great to keep the construction flowing, and as long as we prepare ourselves and understand that we need to work around Mother Nature a bit more, working during the winter when most landscapers are hiding indoors has been great.  We were given an outstanding opportunity in 2007 when we were hired to renovate one pond and build another pond for the House on the Rock in Spring Green Wisconsin.  This turned out to be a fabulous job just overflowing with creativity and challenge.  The people at the House on the Rock have been great to work with and the ponds turned out truly beautiful.  This project excited us, challenged us, cemented our name a bit more as the pond and waterfall experts of Wisconsin, and continues to challenge us into 2008 with yet another pond project to build.  As you can see, 2007 was quite a year for us and we all eagerly anticipate the magic that the 2008 season will bring.

New Year's Resolutions

We are all very excited for the 2008 season to begin, and we are anticipating yet another year of great change.  We are working very hard to improve our company to better serve our clients and 2008 should be a banner year.  It has already started in a very different way than any year prior to this.  This is the first year that we are actively working on construction projects prior to April.  I am not sure why we haven't done this in the past; it really isn't difficult or unpleasant to work outside in the winter as long as you prepare yourself for it.  The biggest problem with the winter work is still trying to find time to do all of the organizational work that we usually do over our winter.  This year we will be changing the way we do things a bit and offering our clients more choices.  In the past, like most companies in this business, we have installed many ponds using bio-falls and skimmer boxes.  These boxes are promoted as necessary items in a natural ecosystem pond, but the truth is that with our extensive field experience, I have developed several new and improved ways of doing things.  I have developed a way to eliminate both the bio-falls and skimmer boxes, create an even better balanced pond, and a pond with a much more natural look and feel.  We like to call this our Natural Flow System™.  No longer must we look at artificial skimmer covers and protruding bio-falls boxes.  There are less man made parts to hide, less man made parts to wear out and better filtration and pond balance to boot.  We are also using the newly developed Constant Water Exchange system to keep our ponds full, instead of the typical problematic auto-fill valve of years past.  Rather than installing an auto-fill valve with multiple moving parts to fail, we will be installing a small adjustable valve which will allow a very minute amount of water into the pond all day everyday.  This new CWE System has many advantages, including less maintenance, better water quality and ease of use.  By adding a slight trickle of water into the pond at all times, we eliminate the need for sticky fill valves that either get stuck on to flood our ponds, or stuck off to deprive our ponds of water.  With the new system, we are constantly renewing the water, but at a very slow and slight rate.  This will keep our ponds topped off at all times and keep the water a bit more refreshed than usually, making it healthier for our fish.  Don't worry, if you want the traditional pond items, we will still be building ponds using the traditional methods, but if you want the latest and greatest, we will offer you that as well.  We are also working on some new improvements to our store and will be unveiling some new water features in April when we open.  We have developed new client referral programs with incentives to hopefully inspire our existing wonderful clients to help us find more wonderful people to introduce to the fabulous water garden lifestyle.  We will also be completing our final pond project at the House on the Rock.  This final pond will be in front of the newly constructed welcome center and will be called the oriental pond.  We are not sure of all of the details yet, but know that it will be a sight to behold.  Tom Kupsh, the project visionary has described it as more whimsical than the previously completed Japanese pond complete with a pine tree island and a waterfall bursting through a wall.   Through all of these changes, we hope to increase the quality of every job that we do as well as improve each customer contact that we make.  We excitedly head out into the 2008 season armed with a passion for ponds and a firm belief that quality and customer service will be the cornerstones on which our business is built now and far into the future.

Over the past decade we have jumped head first into the wildly-expanding water garden industry.  We are committed to being the absolute best water garden contractor and retailer in Wisconsin.  We are the people to go to when you are considering pond, water garden, waterfall or wetland construction of any kind.  Ponds are our Passion!  Since first getting into the pond industry, we have certainly been bitten by the water gardening bug.  The team at HURTH Waterscapes absolutely loves designing and installing water features!  It is the most creative and inspiring work that we do.  As the President of HURTH Waterscapes, I don't know how I went for so many years without a water garden at my house.  I can honestly say that I would never again live in a place without a pond.  A water garden makes a fabulous addition to any yard.  It is hard to convey or even understand what a significant difference the sights and sounds of a pond and waterfall make to a yard, but believe me when I say that you should definitely give it a try.  Install a completely natural eco-system water garden in your yard now and you will not regret it.  As a matter of fact, I would be willing to bet that you too will decide that you couldn't live without your water garden.

Our Commitment to Excellence

Now that we have told you what we will do, we will tell you what we will not do:  We will not start your project and then disappear with no trace.  We will not dump a bunch of materials in your driveway and then not show up for two or three days.  We will not leave you with a huge mess to clean up when we leave.  We will not give you a low estimate to get the job and then raise our prices as the job progresses.  We will not intentionally under sell a project so that we can load it up with extras later.  We will not surprise you with a list of extra charges at the end of the project.  We will not avoid phone calls for warranty work.  We will not leave you with faulty, unfinished work.

We believe that having landscape work done on your property should be a pleasant and positive experience.  As our client, this is your chance to customize your outdoor environment to best suit your needs.  We will work closely with you to ensure that your property will be everything that you want and need it to be.  From the initial meeting to the final billing, you will be treated with the utmost respect.  If you have any questions or concerns regarding any aspect of the project, all that you need to do is call us and we will be at your service to help in any way that we can.

Give us a chance to create your very own ultimate outdoor living space and rest assured that you are in the best hands.

Ponds are our Passion!

 

Sincerely,

Doug Hurth, President

HURTH Waterscapes

 

Call us today and set up an appointment for an expert consultation, or visit our Contact Information page and take the next step towards enjoying you own ultimate outdoor living space!

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