Inside the San Martin Yard: Eight Acres of Stone, Pavers and Bulk Material in South County
PBM's San Martin yard sits on eight acres at 13755 Llagas Ave, between Morgan Hill and Gilroy, and it has been supplying the South Bay since 1989. It carries natural stone, brick, pavers, block, landscape boulders and bulk material including sand, gravel and base rock. You can load up at the yard or have it delivered. It is also the PBM yard closest to the Monterey Peninsula, which is part of why a Carmel Valley patio and a Morgan Hill driveway often get built out of the same eight acres.
Not that long ago, a good share of what sat on that lot arrived by train.
Why the yard ended up in San Martin:
PBM opened San Martin in 1989, during the stretch of the late twentieth century when the company was widening its range well past the lines it started with. The siting logic was the same one behind the original Sunnyvale yard and the Redwood City yard. Get close to the rail, and get close to the highway.
That mattered more than it might sound now. Brick and stone used to arrive from quarries and plants all over the country by rail, so a yard that could not take delivery off the tracks paid to truck everything the last stretch. San Martin sits on the rail corridor running down the southern Santa Clara Valley, and it sits right off U.S. 101.
Today the highway does most of the work the rail used to do. 101 is the spine of the whole run from San Jose down through Gilroy and over the hill toward Salinas and the coast, and the yard is on it.
The other piece of good fortune is the neighbor. Calstone, the paver manufacturer founded in 1947, has a plant in San Martin. Oldcastle APG acquired Calstone in March 2022, which put it in the same family as Belgard. For the yard, it means paver stock is a short haul instead of a long one.
The bulk yard: base rock, sand, gravel and decomposed granite
This is the half of the yard people are most often surprised by. PBM has a reputation for stone and masonry, and the bulk side gets overlooked because of it. San Martin runs a real aggregate operation, and most of what goes under a job is sitting there next to the material that goes on top of it.
Start with base, because most hardscape work starts there.
Class II Base Rock. Crushed aggregate for the layer under driveways, patios, walkways, paver installations and concrete slabs. It compacts tight and carries load. Caltrans designates aggregate base as Class 2 or Class 3, and Class 2 is what most residential and commercial specs call for.
Permeable Class II Base Rock. Same job, open graded, for permeable paver systems and anywhere water has to move down through the section instead of running across it.
3/4" Crushed Rock. Drainage, French drains, backfill, trench bedding.
Then the sands. They look close to identical in the bay and they are not interchangeable.
Then the material that ends up visible.
Gold Fines and Grey Fines, which is what most people are describing when they say decomposed granite.
Stabilized Gold Fines, the same gold DG blended with a binder so a path or trail firms up and stops dusting and migrating. It keeps the warm gold color while it does it.
Auburn Gravel, warm and earthy, used on pathways, driveways, garden beds, drainage runs and accent areas.
Black Lava Rock, Black Mexican Pebbles, Pami Pebbles, Salmon Bay Pebbles and Fresno River Cobble for beds and dry creeks.
Woodchips in mahogany, brown, black and redwood, plus playground bark.
On depth, the number worth knowing before you order: the Concrete Masonry and Hardscapes Association puts a residential driveway on well drained soil at a minimum 6 inches of compacted aggregate base, compacted to at least 98 percent of modified Proctor density. Streets go deeper. If you are working out tonnage, the landscape materials calculator will get you close before you pick up the phone.
Boulders and fieldstone
Boulders are hard to shop for online, which is a decent argument for driving down. Size, color and face vary piece to piece, and the one you want is usually the one you saw.
The yard works from the PBM boulder and fieldstone line, which includes Gilroy Fieldstone, a multicolored stone with green, blue and brown running through it that gets used for rustic walls. It comes from about as close to San Martin as a stone can come from. Alongside it: Willow Creek Boulders, quarried in Northern California in tans, grays and rusts with a hint of cream and purple, plus Potter Valley, Sonoma Fieldstone, Hillsborough Fieldstone, Ocean Pearl, Sydney Peak, Utah Sunrise, Cameron Swirl and McGregor Lake.
For a retaining wall or a grade change, this is the section worth a phone call first. What is on the ground changes, and a wall design built around a specific stone is a different conversation than a pallet order.
Creams, ivories and soft gold: the coastal palette
Here is something you notice after enough trips down 101. The material moving through San Martin skews lighter and warmer than what moves through the yards up the Peninsula.
That is not an accident. The yard reflects PBM's overall line, and then it carries extra depth in the tones the South Bay and the coastal communities actually build with. Creams, ivories, beiges and soft golds, running across paving, flagstone, veneer and bulk. Walk Carmel, Carmel Valley or Pebble Beach and you are looking at that palette on almost every street.
You can see it by name in the line. Tuscan Cream Flagstone and Capitola Buff Flagstone on the pale end. Ocean Pearl in both flagstone and boulders, which is the coastal gray-cream that reads cool in fog. Frontier Tan Flagstone and Arizona Buckskin a shade warmer. Gold Fines and Auburn Gravel carrying the same range in bulk, so a path can pick up the color of the patio it leads to.
A note on keeping it looking right, because it comes up on every cream-toned job: natural stone is supposed to weather. The patina is the point. Stone should breathe and live and take on some age, and a sealer works against that. Sealing belongs on pavers and high traffic surfaces where damp proofing is the actual goal, not on a veneer wall or a fireplace face.
How far the yard reaches
San Martin is the handoff point. North of it, the yards in Santa Clara, Redwood City and Livermore cover the greater Bay Area. South and west of it, San Martin is what serves Morgan Hill, Gilroy, Hollister and the run out toward Salinas, Monterey, Carmel, Carmel Valley and Pebble Beach. PBM also keeps a showroom in Pacific Grove for the Peninsula.
In practice that means a landscape contractor in Gilroy and a designer working a Carmel remodel are pulling from the same inventory, and they are often pulling different halves of it. One is loading base rock and DG. The other is picking flagstone and veneer. Both are standing on the same eight acres.
Loading up: hours, pickup and delivery
The yard is open Monday through Friday, 6:30 AM to 4 PM, at (408) 683-2580. The staff is bilingual in English and Spanish. You can load your own materials while you are there, or PBM can deliver to the site.
Now the part worth saying plainly, because it costs people money every year: do not choose a cream or buff stone from a photo, and do not choose it from one dry sample. Those colors are the most light sensitive material in the yard. Tuscan Cream reads golden in Gilroy sun at noon and nearly white under Carmel fog at nine in the morning, and wet flagstone is a different color from dry flagstone. See it outside, see it wet, and see more than one piece. A single sample tells you almost nothing about how a pallet will lay up, because natural stone varies and that variation is most of the reason to use it. Before you drive down, call the yard or request a quote with your material and quantity. Stock moves, and five minutes on the phone beats an hour on 101.
Questions we get about the San Martin yard
Where is PBM's San Martin yard, and what are the hours? 13755 Llagas Ave, San Martin, CA 95046, between Morgan Hill and Gilroy just off U.S. 101. Open Monday through Friday, 6:30 AM to 4 PM. Phone (408) 683-2580. The full details are on the San Martin yard page.
What bulk materials does PBM supply? Class II Base Rock and Permeable Class II Base Rock, 3/4" Crushed Rock, Concrete Sand, Olympia #1 Masonry Sand, Olympia #2 Stucco/Tile Sand, 3/8" Sand/Gravel Concrete Mix, Gold Fines, Grey Fines and Stabilized Gold Fines, Auburn Gravel, Black Lava Rock, pebbles, river cobble, woodchips and playground bark. Landscape boulders and fieldstone are handled separately from the aggregate. The full material line is on the site.
Can I pick up materials myself, or does PBM deliver? Both. You can load up at the yard during business hours, or PBM will deliver to your door. Call ahead with quantities either way so the material is ready when you get there.
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