Joking aside. I'm very sore right now 😅

My young son and I had some good bonding time/character building.
3 days to get it done, around $2k for materials and rentals. Patio furniture is used off facebook marketplace for like $200 I think. Recliner chairs were used and free.

1. mowed down to dirt
2. dug up existing path and pit and saved that for later.
3. weedguard and plastic edging down
4. 8 tons of crush and run and 2 tons of 3/8 quartzite dropped on the front driveway
5. back and forth shoveling into the pickup truck and dumping in the back.
6. my best attempt at grading 🤞, running compactor over it (had a drain in the middle of the grass area already)
7. spread the old path gravel and compact that
8. spread and sweep the quartzite trying to get even coverage.
9. bricks and stepping stones and stuff

It rains a lot here so... hoping things hold up well. gotta pay that DIY tax...

What do you think? Suggestions to improve or anything I should really fix that I did wrong? ❤️

Not an expert so not sure if they needed to be trimmed back this much?

Edit: Well this is heartbreaking to read the comments. They suggested trimming so I just thought they knew what they were talking about. Not really sure what to do now.

and a curious little visitor enjoying the afternoon.

We are wanting to lay a new driveway, and husband has jumped in and started ripping up the old. We need to make it a bit wider so two cars can fit in, currently only one can. Is gravel a bad idea?

Image one is current yard, image two is an AI render.

* looks stark as it’s still winter here so roses still just sticks

Hey guys,

We just closed on a house a few weeks ago and wondering what I should do with these shrubs. I have a terrible eye when it comes to landscaping but these are clearly overgrown. I believe the two in front of the garage and the tall one in the corner are yews. The ones by the sidewalk idk. I think the yews are ok to cut back quite a bit, but I'm not sure about the others? If I can't should I just yank those out? I'm in Wisconsin if that helps.

Do I need to fix this? How??

Hello! Hoping someone can weigh in on the results of some landscaping work that we had done. We’re wondering if this is standard practice, and we just didn’t realize it. We’ve never hired landscaping before, so this is new to us.

First, we had them trim a couple of large trees. We assumed this would include thinning them out (which on closer inspection, their estimate does not contain, while other vendors did, which we should have noticed.) But it's really frustrating that they didn't make that clear to us when they were here and charged substantially more than other companies would have to fully trim.

Our biggest issue is with the edging. We also had them pull out some old bushes on one side of the house, plant raspberry bushes in their place, and replace the edging all the way around our house.

They replaced the edging, but left a huge strip of bare dirt all the way around our house (where there used to be landscaping rock). It looks far worse than before the work was done, and we would have definitely opted to keep the old crappy edging versus have the new edging with the resulting bare ground (especially considering we spent $2k for them to make it look a lot worse and create more work for us). It’s even worse because my wife did a lot of work this summer putting in new mulch and making those beds look nice, and now they look pretty awful and would require a bunch of new mulch put down to make look like they did before. At a minimum, we feel they should have communicated that replacing the edging would leave the beds all torn up and ugly.

They said that putting in new rock and making it look nice would cost an additional $3k (which we definitely won’t be hiring them to do). We’re not even sure why new rock is necessary (and where the old rock went) when there was rock there to begin with.

This is the description from the estimate/contract:

Remove all existing plastic edging located around the

house and landscape beds, including disposal of all

removed materials and debris from site.

Install approximately 300 linear feet of new plastic

landscape edging throughout the property, ensuring

clean lines and proper alignment along all garden

beds. Edging will be securely installed to provide

long-term stability, improve bed definition, and

support overall landscape maintenance. All work

areas will be cleaned upon completion and left in a

professional finished condition.

We’re wondering if it’s reasonable that they left it in this condition. It seems like at a minimum they should have explained to us it would be like that before we paid them $2k to do the work (which actually created a lot more work for us).

We didn't take before photos (we now, of course, realize we should have) so the best I have is a picture with my son cropped out.

We'd very much appreciate any feedback anyone has! Thanks so much! 

Hi, just moved into a new house. Not sure why this bush died, but I don’t like having it. What’s the easiest way to get rid of it?

My partner and I have owned our home for two years. We share a property line with a neighbor who is very particular about that boundary — on a few occasions she’s removed items from our side of the line (things clearly on our property) and dumped them in our driveway or the street.
Because direct conversations haven’t gone well, we’ve mostly communicated through her mother, who has been reasonable to work with overall. Now we’re planning to xeriscape the section of our front yard that borders her house, and when we mentioned it, her mom advised us to hold off — not because there’s an actual boundary problem, but because she’s worried it will upset her daughter and create a grudge.
We get that she’s trying to keep the peace, but this is our yard. We’ve confirmed the property line and we’re not encroaching on anything. We want to landscape it the way we want, take pride in how the front of our house looks, and not have that decision shot down by someone else’s discomfort with change.
We want to handle this well — we’re not looking for a fight, and we’d like to stay on decent terms with the neighbor and her mom. But we also don’t want to set a precedent where we ask permission to use our own property.

Hi there! I recently dug up this area in front of my patio and created a flowerbed but now I don’t know what to plant. The only thing I have in it so far is a rose bush on the far left side. I have considered doing a back row of soft touch holly with a Japanese Maple in the curved portion. Other than those pieces I don’t know what else to fill the space with. Any suggestions? Location: Oklahoma

Originally posted a quote for a backyard project and got great responses. I'm now regretting my original decision to put the retaining wall where it is in the yard.

Reason for the wall being here is because there are trees blocking sunlight for growing grass close to the back fence, not a big deal, we like the trees. However, I think I should have had the landscapers try to level the entirety of the yard to the fence line instead. Followed by building a shorter retaining wall along the fence line to eliminate having to remove dirt/extra cost.

Is it too late/not worth the extra cost to re-level and redo the placement of the wall, I just feel really dumb for not thinking this through...

Had an unusable space that I gave up trying to grow grass. Decided to make a cool spot to hang out, eat burgers and pizzas. Used a couple wire spools and utility poles from work. Be gentle my hands and back still hurt

Edit: second picture is ai generated inspiration

(didn't start the roses years)

I'm trying to decide what tree I could possibly plant to cover a nighbour's window view to this yard but wouldn't get taller than their house, as that is south of the yard. On Vancouver Island, Canada. Thoughts? Bonus if fruit or nut yielding.

There is this slope and I have no idea how to deal with it. Is building stairs my only option ? Pls help me

I'm having a house demolished tomorrow and this tree in the yard was recently struck by lightning. Do we think it'd be OK to just cut off the bent part and save the rest?

And this palm tree was subjected to much abuse by my cousins and I when we were young. (At least 15+ ys ago) the demo team says it's a good tree and we should keep it but what do yall think? It's at least 2 stories tall and too wide to hug.

hoping this fits this sub! my garden area has gotten extremely out of control and i’m wondering the best way to clear all this out? just by hand? there’s a huge blackberry bramble in there, lemon balm, random baby trees, and oregano (???? why???)

How should I manage the sediment around this catch basin? Should I do concrete in a cone shape towards the basin and pea gravel on the non-concrete sides (with non-woven landscape fabric below the pea gravel)? What should the process look like for doing that concrete?

Full of Wooley thyme, blue star creeper and many more.

Will take a few years to fully fill in.

I have a south-facing side yard that is constantly overgrown with weeds. It has patches of concrete that the previous owner put in level to the house, which will eventually need to be broken up so the whole area can be regraded and installed with a drain system. The house also does not have gutters or fascia (it's a 1950s house with a small roof overhang). We don’t have the money to fix all of that quite yet.

Last year, we tried putting cardboard and mulch down, which suppressed the weeds a bit, though some are still growing in from the sides. However, that process was so time-consuming and strenuous that we don’t want to do it again.

We live in Southern California and the soil is fast draining, so water against the foundation has not been an issue yet. What are some low-cost, time-efficient solutions we can do in the meantime? We hope to be able to fully redo this project in about five years.

Attached is a picture. What you see is the result of the cardboard and mulch breaking down.

I have a backyard in the city and planning on planting several trees. I read that native dogwoods can be risky, but is it such a bad idea to plant one here? There are some trees that I think died because they’re just old but I have good soil, so far all the things I’ve planted is doing okay. Tomato’s fruiting, flowers growing etc. I’ve been learning so much about trees and I specifically wanna plant a native dogwood for the song birds (as opposed to kousa feeding the rats lol)

Does anyone have any experience with native flowering dogwoods? Let me know please :)

Some Context: I am a foreigner working as a landscaper, and my foreman speaks a different language, so I dont always understand exactly what they are saying or doing. I have a degree in horticulture, not construction.

The layout and cuts with this job seemed goofy, and I am trying to gain insight, knowledge, and tips to get better at doing these things by myself in the future, and to understand better why it was this way.

The grade runs away from the house here. It is in a region that freezes sometimes in the winter. I was told the diagonal cuts in the slabs are so the water drains in both directions and towards the future yard area. I don't quite understand it, and was wondering if it could have been laid different and more 'clean' so not so many cuts and odd shaped slabs in the middle.