“We need the baddest home Kansas has ever seen. Understood?”
For Craig Hawkins, President of Green Lawn Inc., and his team, that client challenge would become the driving force behind a project that recently earned top honors in the Segmental Concrete Pavement – Residential – Size More than 3,000 sf category at the 2025 Hardscape North America Awards.
The award-winning project is a real-world lesson in execution, creativity, and what’s possible when ambition meets technical skills.
A Vision Takes Shape
From the very beginning, this project was about pushing boundaries. The home itself is boldly contemporary, designed in collaboration with high-end architects, and the exterior needed to match that level of sophistication.
Before a single paver was laid, Hawkins and his team invested months in careful preparation.
“There was probably a good couple months, off and on, of just reviewing plans, putting estimates together, talking to vendors, talking with architects, understanding what the intent was,” Hawkins said. “We already had the project in our mind and on paper.”
This groundwork proved essential when they finally arrived on-site.
“It’s hard when you’re looking at it on paper to really understand the scope, but it would have been impossible to walk in without all the prior homework,” he said.
The team needed to understand not just their own work, but how it interfaced with every other trade on the property, anticipating what was coming before them and what would follow after.
The design had to be a living, evolving process.
“It was a pretty unique customer,” Hawkins said. “They had a great design vision, but a lot of it was a work in progress as we went. There was a lot of collaboration that happened throughout the project trying to get everything in line with the customer’s vision.”
That vision was ultimately realized into a three-and-a-half-acre modern outdoor oasis.
The Scale of Ambition
The scope extended far beyond typical backyard hardscaping work. The team installed extensive drainage systems throughout the property, including sophisticated solutions for the artificial turf areas. They designed and implemented irrigation systems across the entire acreage, erected aluminum fencing around the perimeter, and tackled erosion control challenges on extreme slopes using geocells and ground cover systems.
The amenities list reads like a luxury resort: fire features positioned strategically from the driveway entrance through the outdoor living spaces, patio misters for cooling, custom COR-TEN steel accent panels that rust instantly for dramatic effect, and an elaborate lighting system with hundreds of fixtures illuminating the property from dusk to dawn.
The Green Lawn team even incorporated a sophisticated softscaping plan featuring multiple seasons of color and varying textures and heights to complement the hardscape elements.
“To find all those features in one project is pretty unusual, and to do it on that scale is pretty unusual, especially in a residential setting,” Hawkins said.
The project demanded roughly a year of continuous presence on site, with crew sizes fluctuating from two members during certain phases to 10 or 12 when the bulk of installation work ramped up.
“I’m very proud of our team. They truly executed it to perfection,” Hawkins said.
Hardscaping Highlights
While the comprehensive landscape transformation was impressive, the hardscape work itself presented unique technical challenges that pushed the team into uncharted territory.
The design centered on Unilock Arcana, a large-format slab paver that was relatively new to the market. The contemporary aesthetic demanded thousands of square feet of this material in two colors: Avorio, a sophisticated cream tone, and Vivanto, a rich charcoal shade. The expansive use of Arcana created an immediate logistical challenge.
“Those colors change from run to run when a producer makes them,” Hawkins explained.
To maintain color consistency across such massive areas, the team had to source all materials from the exact same production run. Any variation would be visible once the pavers were cleaned and installed.
“If something got mixed in, it had to get torn out and redone,” he said.
The Arcana product was also so new it didn’t yet have formalized coping options. This created a significant problem for a project featuring numerous stairs, steps, and pool edges. The team had to innovate solutions on the fly.
For stair copings, they integrated the COR-TEN steel accents, finding adhesives that would bond properly to create a cohesive design element. For the pool coping, they took an even more meticulous approach, hand-painting the edges of the stone to match the top surface and maintain visual continuity.
Perhaps the most unusual innovation involved the polymeric sand used to fill joints between pavers. The client’s exacting standards extended even to this typically overlooked detail. Rather than accepting any standard color option, the team experimented with mixing multiple polymeric sand colors to create a custom color blend.
“We had Polysweep come down, and their representatives were looking at what we’re doing, and they’re like, ‘We have no idea how this will work. Nobody’s done it,’” Hawkins said. “We got concrete blenders and we’re mixing poly sand to create a color.”
Corinna Fell Napolitan, who designed the project with Hawkins, echoed this commitment to the precision required.
“We had a lot of unforeseen issues and we worked through that,” she said.
High-end projects like this demand an obsessive level of detail, especially when working at scale. Small inconsistencies become glaring when repeated across expansive surfaces.
Lessons for Aspiring Hardscapers
For those entering the hardscaping field or working to advance their careers, this project offers valuable insights.
For Hawkins, the biggest takeaway is the process, not just the final product.
“Never stop learning,” he said. “There was stuff we learned throughout this project. If we had walked away thinking it was too hard or too complex, we would have left with a lot less knowledge.”
He also emphasizes the importance of leaning on your team and your vendors, and not being afraid to take on projects that stretch your current skill set.
“Don’t be afraid to take on something challenging,” Hawkins said. “That’s how you grow as a professional in this industry.”
“Don’t be afraid to think outside of the box,” Fell Napolitan added.
Winning with Attitude
Receiving national recognition at the HNA Awards brought a deep sense of validation for the entire Green Lawn Inc. team.
“It was really rewarding and gratifying,” Hawkins said. “I felt a big sense of accomplishment for my team. To be on a national platform and be recognized is a great feeling.”
But Hawkins said their greatest achievement was the satisfaction of meeting a “very discerning” client’s expectations flawlessly.
“My team did exactly what they had to do to make that client happy,” Hawkins said. “That’s probably what I’m most proud of, that the client was happy, satisfied, never regretted any step of the process.”
When the project was submitted for the HNA Awards, it carried the same name the client gave it from day one: The Baddest Home Kansas Has Ever Seen.
“When they handed me the award, they said, ‘That’s winning with attitude,’” Hawkins said. “And I wanted to tell him it wasn’t mine—it was the customer’s.”
The Baddest Home Kansas Has Ever Seen stands as a testament to what’s possible when vision meets skill, when preparation combines with adaptability, and when teams commit fully to excellence.
Whether you’re just starting your career or looking to take on more complex projects, remember that today’s impossible challenge becomes tomorrow’s award-winning achievement when approached with the right mindset and dedication.
