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Landscaping Services

What each job actually involves, what belongs in the written scope, and what to ask the company quoting it. Listed in the order the work has to happen, because the sequence is most of the advice.

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HyreYard is not a landscaping company. We perform none of this work. These pages exist so you can read a proposal from a company that does, tell a specification from a photograph, and compare two bids that currently look identical. There is no price on any of them, because we hold no dataset of landscaping invoices and will not invent one.

Start with the sequence, not the catalogue

Outdoor work has an order that is set by physics rather than by preference. Water and soil come before anything that is planted or paved, because both get dramatically more expensive to correct once there is a patio, a bed or an irrigation main sitting on top of them. The most common and most costly mistake in this category is not choosing the wrong plant or the wrong stone — it is buying the visible layer before the invisible one has been dealt with, and then paying for both again.

First: water, soil and grade

Water, soil and grade decide whether everything above them lasts. They are also the jobs nobody photographs, which is why they are the ones most often left out.

  • Drainage and grading Regrading, French drains, dry wells, downspout extension and swales. Water against a foundation is a building problem before it is a garden problem. Planting into standing water repeatedly is the most expensive habit in the category.
  • Lawn renovation and overseeding Soil test, aeration, dethatching, overseeding and topdressing. Overseeding into uncorrected compaction or shade repeats the same failure every autumn. The soil test comes first.

Then: what gets built

Hardscape is the part with a code question attached and the part where the specification is entirely buried.

  • Patios and walkways Segmental pavers, poured concrete, natural stone and dry-laid flagstone. Four layers, and only the top one is decorative. Nearly every patio that sinks or spreads failed in the base, the bedding or the edge restraint.
  • Retaining walls Segmental block, timber, poured and natural stone walls, and terracing. The permit threshold is measured from the bottom of the footing, not from the ground you stand on — and a surcharge above the wall can remove the exemption at any height.
  • Fencing Wood, vinyl, chain link, ornamental metal and gates. Post depth is set by your county’s frost line, not by a national number, and the line the fence sits on is a survey question before it is a fencing one.

Then: what grows

Plant choice is a regional decision with a hard filter on it, and the filter changed in 2023.

  • Landscape design A measured plan: layout, plant schedule, materials and phasing. Without a plan, three contractors price three different projects and the cheapest is simply the one that scoped least.
  • Planting and garden beds Trees, shrubs, perennials, ground cover, bed preparation and mulch. Plants chosen outside your hardiness zone are a replacement cycle. Mulch piled against a trunk is a slow way to kill the tree you paid most for.
  • Sod installation Grade preparation, soil amendment, laying and establishment. Sod is a surface, not a fix. It succeeds or fails on grade, soil contact and the first three weeks of watering — which you perform, not the installer.
  • Tree service and pruning Structural pruning, removal, stump grinding and health assessment. A safety trade with its own standards. Topping is damage rather than risk reduction, and a removal may need a municipal permit before the saw starts.

Then: what it takes to keep

Maintenance is a recurring contract and installation is a project. They are compared against each other far too often.

  • Lawn care and maintenance Mowing, feeding, weed control and seasonal clean-up, usually on a contract. The two things that most change turf quality — mowing height and watering depth — are free, and they are yours to control rather than the contractor’s.
  • Irrigation systems Design, installation, repair, controllers, sensors and audits. Efficiency comes from zoning by plant need, a rain or soil sensor and a schedule. It does not come from more heads.
  • Artificial turf and turf replacement Synthetic turf, and converting turf to planted or xeric landscape. Underneath, it is a base-and-drainage job exactly like a patio. It also has a replacement cycle, which the water saving has to be weighed against.

Before you talk to anyone

Three things cost nothing and change every conversation that follows. Photograph the yard after heavy rain, because where water stands is the single most useful piece of information about a property and it is invisible on a dry day. Look your address up on the USDA Web Soil Survey and note the drainage class. And check your hardiness zone against the 2023 revision of the USDA map rather than against a plant tag or a habit that predates it.

Then read reading a landscaping estimate and the ten checks. Together they are most of what separates a comparable set of bids from three pieces of paper with different numbers on them.

Related

Questions

Which of these do I need first?
Almost always drainage and soil. Water and compaction are the causes behind most of what people call a plant problem, a lawn problem or a paving problem, and they are the only items on this list that get more expensive to fix after everything else is built around them. If water stands in your yard after every rain, that is the first job regardless of what you wanted to buy.
Does one company do all of these?
Many sell all of them and subcontract several. That is not a problem in itself, but it changes who is accountable, so ask directly which parts are performed in-house and who holds the licence and insurance for the rest. Tree work, irrigation and anything involving chemical application are the three most commonly subcontracted, and in many states each is a separate licence from general landscaping.
Do you perform any of this work?
No. HyreYard is an independent information resource and connection platform. We plant nothing, grade nothing, build no wall, cut no tree and pull no permit. These pages exist so you can read a proposal from a company that does, and judge it.
Why is there no price on any of these pages?
Because we hold no dataset of landscaping invoices and a national average for outdoor work is close to meaningless. Access, soil, grade, regional labour and material availability move these numbers by factors rather than percentages — a small patio behind a narrow gate on a slope can cost more than a large one on flat ground with a driveway to the site. What we publish instead is the arithmetic and the specification lines, so you can compare two real bids against each other.
What is the single most useful thing on these pages?
The written-scope section on each one. Outdoors, the expensive failures are failures of something buried — base depth, compaction, drainage, soil contact, footing depth. It is invisible the day the work is finished, which is why it has to be on paper before it starts. Two bids that look identical in a photograph are frequently not the same project at all.

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