Lawn Maintenance near you

A good crew follows the same routine at every visit so nothing gets skipped, and knowing that routine helps you spot a rushed job.

In a service plan, the big mowing questions are frequency and what happens when the grass outgrows the schedule. During the spring flush a lawn can easily outpace a biweekly visit, and cutting overgrown grass down in one pass shocks it and leaves heavy clumps, so a good crew raises the deck and brings the height down over two visits. In a summer drought the reverse applies: dormant, brown grass should be skipped or cut high rather than mowed on schedule, since wheels and blades damage it further.

Grasscycling, leaving the clippings where they fall, saves the time and waste of bagging and returns nutrients to the soil, and it works best when cuts are frequent enough that clippings are short. Wet mowing is worth settling in advance: cutting soaked grass tears the blades, ruts soft ground and leaves clumps, so the plan should say how rain days are rescheduled.

Spring cleanup opens the season once the snow has gone and the ground has firmed up: raking out matted grass and snow mould, picking up debris and the gravel plows leave along the driveway, clearing beds and cutting back dead perennials, then a first cut when growth starts. Running equipment over saturated ground compacts the soil and leaves ruts, so a good company waits for the yard to dry rather than sticking to a fixed date.

Fall cleanup closes it. Leaves are removed as they come down, in several passes under large trees, because a thick wet mat left under the snow kills the grass beneath it. The final cut goes slightly shorter than the summer height, and beds are cleared. Leaves are mulched into the lawn when the layer is light, set out for municipal yard waste collection or hauled away; ask which, since collection dates and container rules vary from city to city.

Provincial and municipal rules limit what a maintenance company can apply. In Ontario, lawn treatments are restricted to products whose active ingredients are all on the province's Allowable List; in Quebec, the Pesticides Management Code bars the highest-risk pesticides from lawns, and municipalities such as Montreal add bans of their own. A plan that promises a weed-free lawn through routine spraying may not be legal where you live, so get the product names in writing before signing.

Watering is regulated as well. Montreal allows lawn watering only on even or odd days matching the address and during set early-morning or evening hours, with daily watering of a new lawn for 15 days. If the plan includes overseeding or patching, agree on who waters the new seed and make sure the schedule fits your city's rules.

A seasonal agreement books the whole year at once: a weekly or biweekly schedule between set start and end dates, plus the cleanups and treatments listed. It secures a place on the crew's route, which matters in May when calendars fill, and keeps billing simple. Per-visit service is more flexible and suits yards that need an occasional cut or owners who do part of the work, but those customers are often fitted in after contract clients when the grass grows fastest.