On Aquidneck Island the light comes off the water twice — once from the sky, once from the bay — and it lands hard on Portsmouth's stone walls, its orchard slopes, its long grades running down toward the Sakonnet. All Island Landscape reads that ground for a living: grading and trenching a site until it drains the way the land wants to, setting stone patios and retaining walls that will take a century of salt wind without flinching, laying out plantings and seasonal gardens that look like they were always meant to be there. There is a particular satisfaction in a mowed edge holding true along a wall, in loam and mulch trucked out of the yard by the bucket, in a septic line put right and buried and forgotten. Come winter the work turns to salted sidewalks and swept parking lots — pavement dark and clear while the island is still deciding whether to wake. From Portsmouth out through Middletown and Newport, Tiverton and Little Compton, across the bridges to Bristol, Warren, Barrington and Jamestown, the crews leave behind ground that simply holds its shape.