Landscaping services
Most plants that die in a new bed were not killed by the plant. They were killed by the hole, the drainage under it, the water in the first two summers, or a pile of mulch against the stem. A planting quote that names the soil preparation, the bed depth, the mulch depth and who waters in the first season is describing the part that decides the outcome; a list of plants and a price is not.
HyreYard is not a landscaping company. We plant nothing, grade nothing, build no wall, cut no tree and pull no permit. This page explains the work so you can read a proposal and judge the company that wrote it.
Planting failures are slow and they are usually visible before the plant dies. These are the observations worth making in your own beds, and the ones worth looking for in a portfolio of somebody else’s finished work.
The zone is genuinely useful and it answers exactly one question. Most of the reasons a plant fails in a particular garden are in the rows below it, and none of those is on the map.
| What the zone is | The map plots the average annual extreme minimum winter temperature — a single cold night in an average year. It says nothing about summer heat, humidity, rainfall, soil, or how long your winter lasts. |
|---|---|
| What it changed in 2023 | About half of the country shifted to the next warmer half zone, and the other half of the country remained in the same half zone. The revision used 13,412 stations over 1991 to 2020, against 7,983 before, and a half zone is 5 degrees Fahrenheit. |
| What USDA said about reading it as climate data | The developers cautioned against treating the changes as a reliable indicator of global climate change, because they also reflect more sophisticated mapping methods, many more weather stations, and the inherently variable nature of extreme minimum temperatures. |
| Summer heat | Not on the map at all. A plant rated to survive your winter can still be killed by weeks of night temperatures that never drop, which is why plants sold as hardy across a wide range often fail at the southern end of it. |
| Rainfall and humidity | Not on the map. Two places in the same zone can differ by tens of inches of annual rainfall, and humidity drives a large share of the fungal problems a plant will meet. |
| Soil | Not on the map. Drainage, texture and pH decide as much as temperature, and unlike the zone they are things you can change. Look the parcel up on the Web Soil Survey first. |
| Your own microclimates | Not on the map, and they are large. A south-facing wall, a frost pocket at the bottom of a slope, a windward corner and a courtyard can easily differ from each other by more than a half zone within one property. |
| How long your winter lasts | Not on the map. The map is a single cold night in an average year, not duration, not the number of freeze-thaw cycles, and not how late the last frost comes. |
A plant list produced before anybody looked at the soil or the light is a catalogue, not a proposal. These are the things that have to come first, and a company that walks the garden will raise most of them itself.
Almost all of the value in a planting job is created before any plant comes out of its pot. The visible day is the short one.
Marking the bed on the ground and living with the shape for a day or two before anything is cut. The edge is then cut, and how it is finished — a cut edge, steel, stone — is a decision with a maintenance cost attached to it every season afterwards.
Existing grass and perennial weeds come out of the footprint. Turf rototilled into a new bed regrows through it for years, and it is one of the commonest reasons a new bed looks bad in its second season.
Organic matter incorporated across the whole bed rather than dumped into individual holes. Amending only the hole creates a pocket of good soil the roots circle inside instead of growing out into the ground they have to live in.
If water stands in a test hole, that is a drainage job and not a planting one. Raising the bed, routing water elsewhere or choosing plants that tolerate wet feet are all honest answers; putting a plant that will not tolerate it into the hole anyway is not. See drainage and grading.
Plants placed in their pots across the bed and looked at from the house and from the street before a single hole is dug. Spacing is to mature size, which always looks too sparse and is the thing you thank them for in year four.
Holes wider than the root ball and no deeper than it, sides broken up rather than glazed by a spade, circling roots teased out, and the plant set so the root flare finishes at or slightly above grade. Planted too deep is the quietest killer on this list.
A thorough soak that settles soil around the roots and removes air pockets, then a written watering schedule for the first two seasons. New plantings die of drought and of overwatering in roughly equal numbers, and both look the same from a distance.
Penn State Extension: “Apply a 2- to 4-inch layer of organic mulch and no more; use less if the soil is poorly drained.” Finely textured or double-shredded material goes down at 1 to 2 inches instead. Kept clear of every stem and trunk, always.
Mulch is the one landscape material where buying more of it makes the outcome worse. The failure is slow enough that nobody connects a dead shrub to the mulch that went down four years earlier, so these numbers are worth putting into the contract.
| Standard organic mulch | “Apply a 2- to 4-inch layer of organic mulch and no more; use less if the soil is poorly drained.” The phrase "and no more" is in the source, and so is the instruction to use less on poorly drained soil. |
|---|---|
| Fine or double-shredded material | “If using finely textured or double-shredded mulch, use 1 to 2 inches since these materials allow less oxygen through to the root zone.” The same depth in a finer material is a tighter lid over the roots. |
| Clearance from a young trunk | 3 to 5 inches. The flare — where the trunk widens into the roots — stays visible. |
| Clearance from a mature trunk | 8 to 10 inches. A mature tree needs the larger gap, and it is the one most often buried. |
| The mechanism when it is too deep | “air may not penetrate the mulch layer and the underlying soil becomes depleted of oxygen” Roots then grow up into the mulch rather than out into the soil, bark stays permanently damp, and rodents get cover against the stem. |
| What it is doing when it is right | Penn State Extension lists the benefits: it conserves soil moisture by increasing infiltration and slowing evaporation; it moderates soil temperature at the roots; it impedes competing weeds and grass; it removes the mower and string trimmer from the base of the trunk; and it improves soil structure and fertility as it decomposes. |
| Refreshing it | Depth is measured as what is there, not as what you are adding. Two inches added annually onto an existing three is a six-inch problem by year two. Rake back, check the depth, then top up the difference. |
A plant list and a price is not a specification. What the plants are set into, how deep the mulch goes, who waters in the first season and what happens if something dies are the lines that decide what the bed looks like in year three — and they are cheap to ask for and awkward to add later.
Planting is unusual among landscape services in that the failure is slow, partial and easy to blame on weather. A scope that fixes the soil preparation, the mulch depth, the watering responsibility and the warranty terms in advance is the only thing that makes a conversation in month eight a factual one.
Planting is priced on the plants, the ground they go into and how much of both has to be carried. The plants are the visible line and frequently not the largest one.
| Factor | Why it changes the number |
|---|---|
| Plant size at installation | The largest single lever you control. The same species at three sizes is three prices, and the smaller one is often established and growing while the large one is still recovering from transplant. |
| Plant count and spacing | Spacing to mature size uses fewer plants and looks sparse on day one. Instant fullness is bought with plants that will have to be removed later. |
| Species availability | What is grown locally in quantity is cheaper than what has to be sourced from a specialist, and the difference is not about quality. |
| Bed preparation | Removing turf, killing perennial weeds and incorporating organic matter across a whole bed is real labour and real material. It is also the part that decides the outcome. |
| Soil condition | Compacted, rocky or heavy clay ground changes both the excavation and what has to be added. This is also where a soil lookup before the bid stops a surprise. |
| Drainage work | If water stands, the honest bid includes the fix or excludes it explicitly. A planting price that quietly assumes the drainage away is the one that comes back. |
| Access | Whether material and plants can be driven to the bed or carried through a gate. A back garden with no side access is a different labour line from a front bed off the driveway. |
| Mulch volume | A function of area and depth, and the depth is published rather than negotiable. More is not better and it is not a place to spend. |
| Irrigation changes | Adding or converting a zone for a new bed is a separate trade line and belongs in the bid as one. |
| Establishment watering | If the company waters through the first season, that is scheduled labour and it should be priced as such rather than assumed by either side. |
| The warranty | A longer or broader plant warranty is priced into the job, and reasonably so. What matters is that you know which one you bought. |
HyreYard publishes no average price for this work and holds no dataset of landscaping invoices. Access, soil, grade, regional labour and material availability move the number far enough that a single figure would mislead more than it helped.
Check your zone again before you buy anything marginal. USDA released the revised map on 15 November 2023, and about half of the country shifted to the next warmer half zone, and the other half of the country remained in the same half zone. If the plant list in front of you, or the rule of thumb in your head, predates that, it was written against a different map. And keep the limit of the map in view while you do it: The map plots the average annual extreme minimum winter temperature — a single cold night in an average year. It says nothing about summer heat, humidity, rainfall, soil, or how long your winter lasts. It is one useful number about one cold night, not a description of whether a plant will be happy in your garden.
Work out mulch volume at the published depth for your own beds
The full ten-point checklist is on choosing a landscaping company, and the lines a comparable bid contains are on reading a landscaping estimate.
Penn State Extension states the depth and the limit in the same sentence: “Apply a 2- to 4-inch layer of organic mulch and no more; use less if the soil is poorly drained.” Piled against a stem it holds the bark permanently damp, gives rodents cover, and “air may not penetrate the mulch layer and the underlying soil becomes depleted of oxygen” Keep it 3 to 5 inches off a young trunk and 8 to 10 inches off a mature one.
Depth is cumulative. Two inches added every spring onto an existing three inches is a six-inch lid by the second year, and nobody made a decision to do it. Rake back, measure, then top up the difference.
The root flare should finish at or slightly above the finished grade. A plant set two inches low in heavy soil is a plant with its stem permanently in damp ground, and it will decline slowly enough that the planting is never blamed.
A pocket of rich, loose soil inside heavy ground behaves like a container. Roots circle within it instead of growing out, and in wet weather the hole fills. Amend the bed, not the hole.
A bed that is full on handover day is a bed that needs thinning in three years and removals in five. Correct spacing looks sparse and the gap is what mulch is for in the meantime.
The map plots the average annual extreme minimum winter temperature — a single cold night in an average year. It says nothing about summer heat, humidity, rainfall, soil, or how long your winter lasts. Summer heat, humidity, rainfall, soil and your own microclimates are all outside it, and between them they explain most of the plants that die in the right zone.
Lawns and beds want different volumes on different schedules. A bed watered to a lawn programme is a bed being drowned on a timer, and the plants die in a pattern that looks like disease.
The first two summers decide whether a planting establishes. If neither the contract nor a conversation says who is watering and how often, the answer in practice is nobody, and the loss is blamed on the weather.
Possibly, and it is worth five minutes to check. USDA released the revised Plant Hardiness Zone Map on 15 November 2023. It was built from 13,412 weather stations covering 1991 to 2020, against 7,983 stations in the previous edition. About half of the country shifted to the next warmer half zone, and the other half of the country remained in the same half zone. A half zone is 5 degrees Fahrenheit of average annual extreme minimum temperature. The practical consequence is narrow but real: a plant list, a supplier recommendation, a planting date or a habit of thought that predates the revision was written against a different map, and the plants where it matters are the marginal ones — the ones that were only just hardy for you before. Everything comfortably inside your range is unaffected.
USDA’s own developers addressed that directly, and their caveat is the part most often stripped off when the map is quoted: The developers cautioned against treating the changes as a reliable indicator of global climate change, because they also reflect more sophisticated mapping methods, many more weather stations, and the inherently variable nature of extreme minimum temperatures. In other words the 2023 map differs from the 2012 map for several reasons at once, and the number of weather stations nearly doubled between them. Treat it as what it is — a better map of extreme minimum temperatures — and take climate questions to sources built to answer them.
The map plots the average annual extreme minimum winter temperature — a single cold night in an average year. It says nothing about summer heat, humidity, rainfall, soil, or how long your winter lasts. That is genuinely useful, because for a perennial or a shrub, the coldest night is often the thing that kills it. But it is one variable. Two gardens in the same zone can differ by tens of inches of annual rainfall, by weeks of summer night heat, by humidity, by soil texture and drainage, and by how long winter lasts — and every one of those decides plant survival too. Within a single property, a south-facing wall, a frost pocket at the bottom of a slope and an exposed windward corner can easily differ from each other by more than a half zone. Use the zone to rule things out, then use the soil, the light and your own observation to choose among what is left.
Penn State Extension is specific: “Apply a 2- to 4-inch layer of organic mulch and no more; use less if the soil is poorly drained.” And the material changes the number: “If using finely textured or double-shredded mulch, use 1 to 2 inches since these materials allow less oxygen through to the root zone.” Two points people miss. First, the depth is what is there in total, not what you add this year — topping up two inches annually without raking back the old material produces a lid that nobody decided to build. Second, depth is only half the instruction; the other half is distance from the stem. Keep it 3 to 5 inches from a young trunk and 8 to 10 inches from a mature one, with the flare visible.
Because of what the layer does to air and water rather than anything to do with the material itself. Penn State Extension states the mechanism plainly: at excessive depth, “air may not penetrate the mulch layer and the underlying soil becomes depleted of oxygen” Roots respond to that by growing upward into the mulch, where they are in a layer that dries out fast and offers no anchorage. Against a trunk, the pile also keeps bark permanently damp, which invites decay at exactly the point that holds the plant up, and it gives rodents cover to chew at the base through winter. The extension service also notes using less where the soil is poorly drained, because a deep mulch over soil that already struggles to drain compounds the problem. At the published depth, mulch is one of the most useful things in a garden: it conserves soil moisture by increasing infiltration and slowing evaporation, it moderates soil temperature at the roots, and it impedes competing weeds and grass.
Rarely, and importing a bed of topsoil is not the upgrade it sounds like. What usually helps is incorporating organic matter across the whole bed so the amended soil and the native soil blend, rather than creating a sharp boundary that water and roots both stop at. The specific failure to avoid is amending only the individual planting hole: a pocket of loose rich soil inside heavy ground behaves like a buried container, roots circle inside it instead of growing out into the ground they must live in, and in wet weather it fills with water. Start with knowing what you have. The Web Soil Survey from USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service gives you the mapped soil for your parcel, its drainage class and its shrink-swell potential, free and in about five minutes. It is a survey map, not a site investigation of your lot.
Longer than most people expect, and the first two growing seasons are the ones that decide it. A plant arrives with its roots confined to the volume of its container and cannot draw water from the surrounding soil until it has grown into it, which takes a season for a perennial and considerably longer for a tree. What matters is deep, infrequent soaking that encourages roots downward rather than frequent light watering that keeps them at the surface. It also matters that new plantings die of overwatering about as often as of drought, particularly in heavy soil, and the symptoms look similar from a distance — wilting foliage on a plant sitting in saturated ground reads as thirst. Check the soil at root depth with your fingers rather than watering to a schedule. The part to settle in writing is who is doing it: if the contract does not say, the answer in practice tends to be nobody.
Read it before you value it, because the terms vary widely and several common exclusions remove most of the coverage. Ask what period it runs for, whether it covers a replacement plant only or a replacement installed, whether it survives a dry spell or a hard winter — weather exclusions are the most common way a warranty turns out not to apply — and what maintenance obligations on your side void it. A warranty conditional on watering you were never told to do is a warranty in name. Ask too whether it covers the plant dying or only the plant failing to leaf out, and how a partly declining shrub is treated. The honest version of this conversation, which a good company will have, is that a warranty is a risk-sharing term with a price attached, and a shorter honest one is better than a long one with exclusions you did not read. Our fuller treatment is at /plant-warranties/.
Information on this page is general and varies by climate, soil, grade, construction and local code. It is not horticultural, arboricultural or engineering advice, and a local building department, water utility or homeowners association can impose requirements that take precedence over anything written here. HyreYard is an independent landscaping resource and connection platform, not a landscaping company, and does not perform, supervise, inspect or warrant any outdoor work.
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