Landscaping Services

Most of what we get called for is a yard that has been in place twenty years and stopped working. Beds have crept out of shape, the yews planted against the house are taller than the windows, and half the lawn burns out in July.

A full install runs straight through. Old material comes out, the grade gets corrected where water is going the wrong way, beds are cut new, topsoil and compost are worked in, trees and shrubs are set, perennials fill around them, and everything is edged and mulched before we leave. Smaller jobs are one bed or a run of screening along a property line. Both get the same walkthrough and the same written price.

There is no plan before the walk. Nelson comes out, and most of what gets decided happens standing in the yard with you.

We dig a few holes first. Soil in northern Westchester goes from decent loam to rock and heavy clay inside one property line, and clay decides a lot. It drains slowly, it holds water against roots through a wet March, and it rules out anything that will not sit in it. The slope tells us where water already goes and whether it is going there on purpose. Then we look at light. A bed on the north side of the house and a bed at the end of the driveway are two different growing conditions, and the same six shrubs in both is how you end up replacing half of them in year three.

Then we ask what you do out there. Kids and a dog means the lawn stays open and the beds get pulled off the play area. If nobody uses the side yard, it can be ground cover instead of grass you mow for no reason. If the real problem is that you can see into the neighbor's kitchen, the job is a screen and everything else comes second. You get a written scope and a number at the end of that visit or shortly after. No design fee, no presentation.

The grade and the drainage get resolved first, before a single plant goes in the ground. Planting on a wet grade is money spent twice.

What the correction involves depends on where the water comes from and where it can go, and that is set out on our drainage solutions page.

A bed edge is what makes a property read as maintained. Where the soil is spent we work in new topsoil and compost rather than burying tired soil under bark. The edge and the mulch that go in with a new install are the same ones our mulching and seasonal planting service keeps up after we leave.

Bed renovation is the common job on an older property. Everything comes out except what is worth keeping, the bed line is redrawn, the soil is amended and it gets replanted. That beats working around overgrown shrubs that were the wrong plant to begin with.