From lawn maintenance to gardening, these pros will keep your yard pristine
Maintaining a yard is a huge undertaking that goes way beyond mowing your lawn once a week. Hiring a landscaper will not just save time—it will set you up to have a gorgeous yard season to season. If you want the grass to be greener on your side of the fence, here is who you can hire to do yard work.
Landscapers are the go-to contractors for yard work, but they can do a lot more than just take care of your lawn. In fact, hiring a local landscaper has some serious benefits:
They have expertise: Landscapers are experts around the yard. They know exactly how to maintain a lawn in every season. They know which plants work best in your hardiness zone and how to prune and fertilize them to get the lushest garden possible. They can also use landscaping around the house to solve certain problems like basement flooding. They can even install and maintain in-ground sprinklers and hardscaping.
They will stick to a schedule: When it comes to yard maintenance, there is certain work you must do at certain times. For example, if you miss a couple of weeks of mowing, your lawn can quickly become overgrown. If you fertilize at the wrong time, your lawn could end up with brown patches that do not recover unless you reseed.
They can handle projects of any size: Landscapers do more than routine yard work, like raking leaves and mowing your lawn. They can handle larger individual projects, like clearing your land of trees, building retaining walls and pathways, or completely redesigning the landscape.
Keep in mind that not all landscapers have the same expertise. If you are looking for hardscaping or a significant renovation, you may want to hire a larger landscaping company that has landscape designers or architects on staff. If you’re looking for something more specific, you can hire a lawn care pro or a yard cleanup service.
DIY yard maintenance is a common weekend task for homeowners. In fact, standard lawn maintenance does not even require a green thumb. Many homeowners mow their own lawn, weed, and rake leaves. Some people go as far as making their own mulch and planting their own flowers.
That said, yard maintenance involves a lot of different tasks and they change from season to season. In general, landscaping costs $50 to $1,800 per service, depending on the service. You can save cash by doing regular maintenance and hiring a pro for seasonal or one-off jobs.
A handy person does not have the expertise of a local landscaper. They will not necessarily know when certain plants bloom or how to best maintain them, but they can typically perform light yard work. This includes stuff like minor deck or fence repairs, power washing a patio, yard cleanup, minor hardscaping repairs, snow removal, and exterior painting.
If you need someone to help with your lawn and garden, you are better off hiring a landscaper who has the expertise to maintain plants properly.
You can hire a gardener to do certain types of yard work. Gardeners are experts in gardening. This includes jobs like choosing the right plants for your yard, maintaining the health of your plants, pruning, treating plants for pest infestations and disease, treating the soil, weeding, mowing, mulching, watering, and maintaining your lawn.
A gardener typically will not perform hardscaping tasks, like repairing a gate or replacing broken pavers. Some may install small fixtures or gravel, but it depends on the contractor. Most of the time, you will need to hire a landscaper or handy person to perform additional yard work.
Yard maintenance varies based on the season. Your landscaper will create a schedule and return regularly to perform different tasks. Something like mowing the lawn may happen every week during the growing season, while aerating your lawn may happen every two years. Jobs include:
Mowing, fertilizing, aerating, dethatching, and reseeding the lawn
Planting, pruning, trimming, and fertilizing flowers, hedges, trees, and ornamental grass
Treating your landscape for pest infestations and plant disease
Weeding and weed prevention
Mulching
Raking and bagging fallen leaves
Snow removal and deicing
Yard cleanup
This does not include one-off jobs like redesigning your landscape, installing landscape curbing, or designing a new paver patio.
The cost of yard work depends on the type of work you need done. The average cost of lawn care is $300, but you could pay as little as $100 or up to $500.
How often you should maintain your yard depends on your climate and what season it is. A general rule of thumb is to maintain a lawn height of three inches.
Some things you can do to prepare for yard work services are aerate the soil, fertilize your grass, keep weeds under control, regularly mow your lawn, and water your grass.
