Landscape Contractors and Truckee Gardeners

About Grateful Gardens

Grateful Gardens is the dream business of owner Timmy Critz. Today, Grateful Gardens is a licensed landscaping company offering services to the Truckee and surrounding communities. Grateful Gardens is ready to make your dream space come true. We specialize in custom landscaping projects from patios and decks to elevation changes and rock work to native selected plants and water features. Our team works hard to help clients realize their dream gardens and ideal home yards by designing, installing and maintaining custom outdoor environments.

Ashtin Stewart

General Manager

Ashtin has been a dedicated and hard worker for Grateful Gardens since August 2015. A talented machine operator, Ashtin is our lead foreman on all our landscape installation jobs. He lives in Sparks with his partner, Noel, and daughter, Delila. He enjoys Snowmobiling, Motorcycles, and spending time with his family.

Karen Odmark

Office Manager

That smiling voice on the phone when you call the office is Karen who joined us in 2021 as Trish's assistant. Karen moved to Truckee in 1999, working in the animal care industry for 20 years, being particularly passionate about the welfare of dogs. Karen loves spending time with her teenage daughter Lola, partner Shawn and their dog Nikki. In her leisure time she enjoys hanging out by any body of water, especially summer evenings at the Truckee river; reading, swimming, bike riding, working out, hiking with dogs and cooking.

Mercedes Johnson

Master Bookkeeper

Mercedes joined our team in 2016. She is our behind-the-scenes numbers master! She has helped Grateful Gardens become a profitable, efficient, and top-service company since joining our team. She is dedicated to inspiring business owners with their true value and motivates the team at Grateful Gardens to do better each and every day. Mercedes and her partner Greg own a house on Donner Lake.

Gordon Critz

Assistant General Manager

Ever since Gordon was a young boy, he would help his father in the yard and on jobsites. An excellent manager and machine operator, he also captures and edits all of our photo/video content for our website and other social media platforms. His vision has always been to continue in Timmy Critz’s footsteps and keep Grateful Gardens a family business. Gordon lives in Truckee and loves to ski coach in the winter. When spring hits, you’ll find him on the disc golf course or spinning music at a club.

Jim Griffin

Production Manager

Coming from a trail building background, Jim joined our team in 2022 and has been a valuable member of the team in many ways. Moving to Truckee from Boonsboro, Maryland in 2009, Jim has learned many skills while instilling his hard work ethic learned from growing up on a farm. He lives in Truckee with his 9 year old dog Bella and enjoys snowmobiling in the backcountry on his time off.

Meet Our Founder
Timmy Critz

You Dream it. We Make it Happen.

Grateful Gardens was founded in 2006 out of a passion for creating dream landscapes in Truckee’s beautiful environment. Founder Timmy Critz and his team of landscape expert contractors and Truckee-knowledgeable gardeners share a beautiful vision for landscaping in the region. They specialize in regenerative land management, permaculture practices, and beautiful hardscapes. We love assisting and creating the vision with you. With Timmy Critz’s building expertise and deep design knowledge, Grateful Garden will be the quality choice for your landscape needs.

Timmy Critz grew up on a 1,000 acre dairy farm, the youngest of nine kids, with five sisters ahead of him. All of the outside chores like cleaning the pool and mowing the lawn fell on Tim. Soon, lawn mowing became a love. “There is something about the straight lines of planting a wheat field or mowing a large turf surface that has stuck with me my whole life,” says Critz.

His father also owned a ski hill and that old Tucker grooming machine provided a year-round opportunity for Critz to practice making more straight lines. Thus, when he moved to the Tahoe area, he naturally began to landscape in the summers and groom snow in the winters. Critz developed his design skills and gardening knowledge through years of experience, and eventually founded Grateful Gardens in 2006. He still loves to play with big machines or simply work with a shovel to create living art pieces and maintain them to perfection.

“You can enjoy your outdoor space here in Truckee 24-7 with the right know-how. Now in our 19th year with the team I have assembled, we can take care of any size project that you could possibly envision.”

We would be grateful for an opportunity to introduce ourselves and our work to you. Please contact us for more information or a free consultation (530) 550-9372.