Landscapers near you

Knowing which kind of work you need makes it easier to ask for the right quote. A yard that only needs tidying calls for a maintenance crew, while a sloped lot with soggy corners and no usable patio needs a design first and a construction crew after. Hardscaping, the built part of a landscape, is usually the biggest share of a construction project and the hardest to redo.

Buried gas, power, telecom and water lines are often shallower than people expect, so no one should excavate, set posts or plant large trees before they are marked. In Quebec, the Régie du bâtiment du Québec tells contractors to request a free locate from Info-Excavation at least 4 business days before excavation starts. In Ontario, locates through Ontario One Call are free and required by law at least 5 business days before digging. Neither service marks private lines, such as a feed to a garage or a pool heater.

In a Canadian yard, the part you never see decides how long a hard surface lasts. Pavers and slabs rest on compacted crushed stone and a thin bedding layer; if that base is too shallow, poorly compacted or holding water, frost lifts it unevenly and the surface ripples, sinks or cracks. Ask each landscaper to describe excavation depth, base material and compaction in the quote, since the right answer depends on your soil and on whether cars will drive on it.

A retaining wall holds back soil, and one that fails can lean, bulge or collapse onto a walkway. Whether it needs a permit or an engineer depends on its height, what sits above and below it, and who uses the space nearby. In Toronto, the City's building permit guide says a permit is required to build a retaining wall more than one metre high when it is on or next to public property, including streets, next to building entrances, or on private property the public can access. Other municipalities set their own triggers, and a wall that holds up a driveway, a slope or a structure is the kind that calls for an engineer's design, so ask before the plan is final.

Landscaping touches other rules that change from one city, borough or town to the next: permits to cut or damage protected trees, fence heights, pool enclosures, how much of a front yard may be paved, where a driveway may meet the street, and work in heritage areas or near a watercourse. Check with your municipality, and with the association in a condo or a development with restrictive covenants.

Beds planted with species native to your region, or with plants suited to dry spells, generally need less watering, fertilizer and pest control once established, and they feed pollinators and birds. A conventional yard of lawn and annual flowers is familiar and easy to walk on, but it asks for more water and more work every season. Many homeowners settle on a mix: lawn where children and pets play, planted beds or meadow-style areas where they don't.

Good landscapers book up early, so design often happens over winter and construction starts once the ground has thawed and firmed up in spring; a patio laid on saturated, partly frozen soil tends to settle later. Summer suits hardscaping and larger planting if water is available, while late summer and early fall favour sod, seeding and many trees and shrubs, which then root in cooler weather.

Late fall is for cleanups, wrapping shrubs exposed to salt spray and staking bed and walkway edges so the snow crew doesn't gouge them. Give new pavers and walls a full winter to reveal any movement, and have the landscaper return in spring if joints open or sections heave.