Today we’d like to introduce you to AmyJo Anderson.
Hi AmyJo , thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I didn’t take a straight line into landscaping, and I don’t pretend I did.
I started in the Air Force as a Special Weapons Technician on active duty. That job taught me standards, accountability, and how to finish something the right way even when no one is watching. After that I worked as an Air Show Coordinator as a civilian — logistics, people, timing, and making a big production look effortless from the outside.
Then I given the opportunity to bring the Tilted Kilt franchise from Las Vegas to Texas. Running a restaurant franchise is hospitality in its raw form: you learn how people actually use a space, what monetary value they will apply to an atmosphere and environmental feel, and what it takes to keep a team and a business moving and what will crash it. When I sold out my share of the franchise, I then acquired a non-medical home health company and also worked as an insurance benefits counselor. That chapter was about families, trust, and showing up when life is at its most personal, complicated and wounded.
Anderson Landscape is where all of that came together for me really. If you’ve followed my timeline, he was obviously already running the business. Now after joining my husband Chris in our family business, I’ve spent intense time marketing and also learning technologies while also designing. Meanwhile he’s been building the plans of our outdoor living spaces that can handle Central Texas weather — custom patios, pergolas, outdoor kitchens, fire features, composite decks, and complete landscape renovations, including the native, water-wise plantings that make a backyard feel finished. I joined our company fulltime after the 2008 “financial correction” or whatever we are calling that debacle now. At that point in time, home services marketing went from door fliers and yellowbook ads to heavy internet overnight and all the sudden, Google became the giant magnifying glass it is and has remained in what at that time seemed like the blink of an eye. Your website wasn’t just a read about us digital billboard and business card where people had to know your url to find you anymore. That was the year that you had to have some type of digital ad space or relevancy to get work and be trusted. All the sudden to play in the dirt we had to be digital and tech savvy too. While I’m nowhere near a tech genius, I learn quick and I refuse to fail because I was too dumb to learn to compete. Yay! My military fortitude would finally pay off literally this time.
We didn’t wake up one morning and decide to be “the patio people.” We built a company the same way we build a staycation landscape: one careful decision at a time, with high standards, cutting edge technology in our industry and real care for the people who let us into their homes. More than a quarter century later,while raising 3 kids to adulthood and 27 years in this beautiful community we all call Central Texas — we’re still doing that work for homeowners in Austin, Georgetown, Liberty Hill, Round Rock, and the surrounding eastern hill country area.
That’s the through-line. Discipline from the military. Care from hospitality and healthcare. And a simple goal that hasn’t changed: help families get outside and unplug while actually connecting in ways that really matter. In our words, “Let’s get outside and play, The Anderson Landscape way!”
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
There’s a line from the Yellowstone series that describes it best I think. Lloyd’s character says, “You’re either born a willow or an oak.” The road has not been smooth, and I wouldn’t trust a 27-year business without big corporate backing whose story that has claimed it was.
Texas itself is a struggle if you build outdoors for a living. Heat, drought, sudden storms, clay soil, and a climate that does not care about your timeline. A patio, pergola, or full backyard renovation has to hold up after the photos are taken. That means we don’t get to sell a pretty idea and walk away. The work has to survive August scorching and February 80 mile an hour wind gusts.
There have also been the business seasons nobody puts on a website. Homeowners pause big projects when the economy tightens. Materials get expensive or hard to get after another increase in fossil fuels for the millionth time. Growth in a region like ours turns small businesses into real life games of monopoly where your competitors aren’t even real local companies but just sales bots on a website in South Carolina or other state buying up the media market share online saying they are locals while their testimonials are all out of state. Their business model is designed to bump the actual contractors to page irrelevant on the search engines while selling your neighbors to a lead generation system of local guys who are paying to be one of 3-5 getting sold that same lead. Meanwhile the customer is now getting spammed to death and has instant cringe when a real contractor is referred to them.
Trust is the quiet struggle. This isn’t a small purchase. Clients are inviting you onto their property and asking you to change how they live outside. Early on, you are asking strangers to believe you. Later, you are protecting a reputation it took decades to build. Both are heavy in different ways. We still have to show up with the same standards we’ve promised the family who trusted us with their backyard, their garage code to access the sprinkler box and vision of their families evening and weekend dreams of enjoyment.
And then there is the personal side of running a family business with my husband Chris. You are partners at home and on the job. That takes communication, patience, and a willingness to keep the mission bigger than any one hard week. What I know now is that the struggles became the standard. Discipline from the Air Force. Care from hospitality and healthcare. Persistence from every restart. That’s why we still talk about getting outside and playing the Anderson Landscape way — not because it was easy, but because the work is worth doing well and because nothing cures a tough physical, psychological or emotional day like closing your eyes, soaking up the feeling of the warm sun on your shoulders while listening to the birds or cicadas singing in the trees and running your bare feet through cool grass. It is absolutely the best medicine in the world and we are proud to introduce your family to it year after year.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
Anderson Landscape is a complete design/build company. For more than 2 decades we have been designing and installing or building sustainable outdoor living landscapes here in Central Texas. Our company is led by a husband and wife team Chris and Amy Anderson. Chris is the technical heart of what we do, and I’m proud of that.
He is degreed from Texas Tech University in natural resource management, with deep expertise in Texas native landscape and erosion-control methods as well as construction. That is not a slogan for us. It is how we design. We look at soil, drainage, slope, water, and how a family will actually use the space — then we build something that belongs in Central Texas, not something copied from a magazine in another climate.
What we do is complete outdoor living: custom patios, pergolas, outdoor kitchens, fire features, composite decks, and full landscape renovations, including native, water-wise plantings that finish the design. What we specialize in is taking the guesswork out of that process.
We use cutting-edge tools like AI 3D software so the design is not ambiguous. Clients can see the space before we ever break ground. We also use true measuring technology like Moasure, so the estimate is based on real measurements — not a “guestimate” that changes once the crew arrives. If someone else is pricing from a walk-through and a gut feeling, that is not the same thing.
We have completed hundreds of projects, and many of those clients come back. That is what I am most proud of. It is an honor to be called for second and third homes as families upgrade, and just as much of an honor when they empty-nest into something more modest and still want us to do the work. That kind of loyalty is not accidental. It is built one accurate plan and one finished backyard at a time.
What sets us apart is the combination: Chris’s natural-resource and construction background, decades of local work, precise measuring, clear 3D design, and a water-wise philosophy we have actually stood behind in public. We helped to fight to pass legislation to keep HOAs from denying water-wise xeriscape options for yard areas that should save water. We have said it for years: if you don’t need it for paws or feet, save it for your beak. That is Anderson Landscape. Design you can see. Pricing you can trust. Landscapes that respect Texas water. When quality is your priority Anderson Landscape is the authority.
Do you have any memories from childhood that you can share with us?
Anderson Landscape is a complete design/build company. For more than 2 decades we have been designing and installing or building sustainable outdoor living landscapes here in Central Texas. Our company is led by a husband and wife team Chris and Amy Anderson. Chris is the technical heart of what we do, and I’m proud of that.
He is degreed from Texas Tech University in natural resource management, with deep expertise in Texas native landscape and erosion-control methods as well as construction. That is not a slogan for us. It is how we design. We look at soil, drainage, slope, water, and how a family will actually use the space — then we build something that belongs in Central Texas, not something copied from a magazine in another climate.
What we do is complete outdoor living: custom patios, pergolas, outdoor kitchens, fire features, composite decks, and full landscape renovations, including native, water-wise plantings that finish the design. What we specialize in is taking the guesswork out of that process.
We use cutting-edge tools like AI 3D software so the design is not ambiguous. Clients can see the space before we ever break ground. We also use true measuring technology like Moasure, so the estimate is based on real measurements — not a “guestimate” that changes once the crew arrives. If someone else is pricing from a walk-through and a gut feeling, that is not the same thing.
We have completed hundreds of projects, and many of those clients come back. That is what I am most proud of. It is an honor to be called for second and third homes as families upgrade, and just as much of an honor when they empty-nest into something more modest and still want us to do the work. That kind of loyalty is not accidental. It is built one accurate plan and one finished backyard at a time.
What sets us apart is the combination: Chris’s natural-resource and construction background, decades of local work, precise measuring, clear 3D design, and a water-wise philosophy we have actually stood behind in public. We helped to fight to pass legislation to keep HOAs from denying water-wise xeriscape options for yard areas that should save water. We have said it for years: if you don’t need it for paws or feet, save it for your beak. That is Anderson Landscape. Design you can see. Pricing you can trust. Landscapes that respect Texas water. When quality is your priority Anderson Landscape is the authority.
Pricing:
- Landscape pricing is custom. Every stick, stone and brick has a price for material, installation, delivery and even debris removal, clean up and haul off. We are always fairly priced in every category.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.andersonlandscape.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/austinluxurylandscapes/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AustinLuxuryLandscapes
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amyjo-anderson-centraltx
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/redirect
