Hardscapes & outdoor living ยท Allen County, Indiana
Hardscapes built for Fort Wayne clay and five Indiana winters.
Autana builds paver patios, retaining walls, fire pits and full landscapes across New Haven, Fort Wayne and Auburn. Joel walks your property before he prices anything, then calls you back in about 30 minutes.
- Insured crews
- Workmanship warranty on patios & walls
- Serving Allen & DeKalb County since 2020
- Free quotes
- Owner operated since 2020
- Insured
- Boom lift operator certified
- Certified outdoor lighting installer
- Workmanship warranty on installs
- 50% deposit, 50% at completion
- Residential & commercial
- Free written quotes
Start here
What is going on in your yard?
Tap the one that sounds closest. We will point you at the right page and the right fix.
You need a paver patio with a real base. Allen County sits on Blount and Pewamo clay, which holds water and heaves in a freeze. That is why a patio set on 4 inches of stone sinks by year three. Autana digs deeper, compacts in lifts, and locks the edge.
That is almost always downspout water with nowhere to go. We bury the downspout lines, cut a rock channel or a French drain, and pitch the grade away from the block. It is one of the cheapest fixes on this whole site and it protects everything else.
A slope that washes needs a wall with drainage behind it, not just blocks stacked on dirt. Clay will not drain on its own, so water builds up behind the wall and pushes it over. We backfill with clean stone and run a drain line before the first course goes down.
Rough beds usually mean the edge is gone and the mulch is thin. We reset the edge in stone or boulder, pull the weeds out by hand, refresh the plantings, and lay fresh mulch or rock. A full front-bed renewal typically lands between $900 and several thousand depending on plant count and yardage.
Joel is certified for outdoor lighting through our supplier, both landscape lighting for the season and permanent holiday lighting. We light walkways, wall faces, tree canopies and the front elevation, and we repair fixtures that already exist.
We mow weekly, bag when you want it bagged, edge the walks and keep the beds clear of weeds and broken branches every visit. Joel keeps notes on how each property likes it done, because not every house wants the same cut.
Everything outside the house
Eight services, one crew, one number to call.
Paver Patios
The centerpiece build. Excavation, compacted base, screeded bedding, cut edges and polymeric sand.
- Why base depth matters in Allen County clay
- Pavers vs stamped concrete, honestly compared
- What a patio actually costs here
Retaining Walls
Block and boulder walls with drainage built in behind them.
- Drainage stone and pipe behind every wall
- Where the 4 foot engineering line sits
- Seat walls and terraced beds
Fire Pits & Outdoor Living
Pits, seat walls and the patio around them, planned as one build.
- Round, square and built-in pit shapes
- Seat wall height that people actually sit on
- Clearances from the house and the fence
Landscaping & Mulch Beds
Bed rebuilds, plantings, boulders, rock, edging and pre-emergent.
- Stone, boulder and steel edge options
- Mulch vs river rock for Indiana beds
- What a full front bed renewal runs
Drainage Solutions
Buried downspouts, rock channels, French drains and regrading.
- Where clay soil sends your roof water
- Buried downspout runs and pop-up emitters
- Fixing the wet spot before you pave it
Outdoor Lighting
Certified landscape lighting plus permanent holiday lighting.
- Path, uplight and wall wash placement
- Holiday lighting hung and taken down
- Repairs to systems already in the ground
Lawn Care & Mowing
Weekly mowing, edging, trimming, fertilizer and cleanups.
- Bagged or mulched, your call, noted per house
- Spring and fall cleanups
- Turf and ornamental bed fertilizer
Snow Removal & Salting
Commercial plowing, residential blowing and de-icing all season.
- Commercial lots and HOA common ground
- Residential drives and walks
- Salting and de-icing routes
Why people call Autana back
Quality over quantity is not a slogan here. It is how Joel prices the job.
We walk the property with you first
Before a number gets written down, Joel walks the whole property with you and asks two questions: what do you actually want, and what went wrong with the last company. Then the plan gets built around those answers.
There is a block where Autana takes care of four houses. One owner wants it mowed and bagged every time and hates a hard edge. The lady two doors down wants her front lawn push mowed and bagged separately. Both get exactly that, every week. Most crews will not track that. It is the whole reason those four houses stayed.
Built for clay, not for the photo
The soils under most of Allen and DeKalb County are Blount, Glynwood and Pewamo. All three are heavy clay with a seasonal water table that sits inches under your grass from December through May. Water does not soak in here. It sits.
So we over-build the part you never see. Deeper excavation, aggregate compacted in lifts instead of one dump, fabric between the clay and the stone, and clean drainage rock with a pipe behind every wall. That is the difference between a patio that photographs well in October and one that is still flat in five years.
The quote is padded in your favor
Quotes come out of Jobber, in writing, with the labor hours and the material yardage laid out. If a job looks like eight hours, Joel quotes ten. That buffer is there so a surprise under the sod does not turn into a surprise on your invoice.
When the job comes in under, the bill comes in under. Quoting $3,000 and charging $2,800 is a normal Tuesday around here. If something does push the price up, you hear about it before we touch it, not after.
- 6Years serving northeast Indiana
- 30Minutes to a callback, typical
- 4Seasons covered, spring through snow
- 6Cities on the regular route
Where we work
New Haven, Fort Wayne and Auburn, plus the towns in between.
Autana runs out of New Haven, so the tighter the route the better the pricing. These three cities have their own page with local detail:
Also serving: Garrett, Columbia City, Warsaw, Huntertown, Leo-Cedarville, Grabill, Harlan, Woodburn, Monroeville, Hoagland, Waterloo, Butler and Kendallville. Bigger jobs travel farther. Ask.
How a job runs
Four steps, no mystery.
We look at the property
On site, with you, so we understand the grade, the drainage and what you are picturing.
You get a written quote
Built in Jobber with labor hours and material yardage spelled out. Free, and padded in your favor.
50% down, job scheduled
Half up front holds your slot and buys material. The other half is due when the work is finished.
We build it and clean up
Site left clean. Patios and walls carry our workmanship warranty from the day we pull out.
Instead of a finance pitch
A workmanship warranty on every patio and wall we install.
If a patio settles or a wall moves because of how we built it, we come back and make it right. The warranty covers our work, not damage from something hitting it or from a change somebody else made to the drainage. Autana does not offer financing, and we would rather say that plainly than send you through an application.
The person answering the phone
Joel Lugo started Autana in 2020 and still walks every job.
Autana is not a call center with a dispatch board. Joel takes the call, prices the work, and is on the property while it is being built. He is certified as a boom lift operator and certified through our supplier for outdoor lighting.
The thing he says most often is that his job is to not make people wait. Big companies treat a callback like a favor. He does not.
Recent work
Real jobs, real yards, no stock photos.
Questions Joel gets every week
Straight answers before you call.
There is no flat price, because the price is labor hours plus material, and both change with the yard.
As rough guardrails from real Autana jobs: a landscaping project usually lands between $900 and $10,000, with most in the $2,000 to $3,000 range. Patios realistically start around $8,000, since the cheapest one we ever quoted was $7,900, and large builds have gone past $28,000. A cleanup might be two to four hours. A new bed install might be four to six. We measure, we count the plants and the yardage, and we put it in writing.
Because wet mowing damages the turf and the mower, and neither of those helps you.
Cutting saturated grass tears the crowns, ruts the soil, and packs the deck with clumps that get dumped in piles across your lawn. We wait for a decent day. Your yard looks better for it and your schedule slides by a day, not a week.
We can give you the day, not the hour.
We work outside with several properties on a route. A belt breaks, a tire goes flat, a job runs long, and the whole day shifts. What we will tell you is which day we are coming, and we will let you know if that changes. You do not need to be home for most work.
Yes. 50% before we start, 50% when the job is finished.
The deposit buys your material and holds your spot on the schedule. On smaller projects we sometimes go as low as 40% down. Nothing gets ordered and nothing gets scheduled until the quote is accepted.
Patios, walls and fire pits carry an Autana workmanship warranty.
If it moves because of how we built it, we fix it. It does not cover something being hit, purposely damaged, or a drainage change made after we left. This is also why we push drainage so hard up front. On a sloped patio we will put drains in before we pave, because that is what keeps the warranty real.
No. Autana does not offer financing.
We keep the pricing in the middle of the market instead. Not the cheapest bid you will get, not the most expensive, and the payment split is simply half at the start and half at the end.
About 30 minutes during working hours.
A form on this site texts Joel right away and he calls back as soon as he sees it. If you would rather book a time yourself, pick a slot on the calendar. Appointments run 10am to 6pm and can be set two days to two weeks out.
Yes. Downed branches, tree removal after a storm, and badly overgrown lawns are the emergency work we take.
Call rather than fill out the form for those. Joel holds a boom lift operator certification for the height work.
Where to next
Free quote
Tell us what the yard needs. You will hear back in about 30 minutes.
Quotes are free and in writing. Serving New Haven, Fort Wayne, Auburn and the towns around them.
Request your free quote
Name, phone and a sentence about the project is plenty to start.