Establish your priorities. Plan to work on the areas that you’ll use the most. Only you know whether you get more pleasure out of a patio or an herb garden.
Have a long-term plan. Redo your yard with a plan. A two-to-five-year plan is appropriate if you’re doing major installations, such as adding a new deck, a rock garden, and/or a water feature, or if you have a big property. Use your budget estimates to decide which parts of your plan you can have this year and which have to be deferred.
Do a little at a time. Landscaping can be a bite too big to chew in a weekend of hard labor. If you’re doing the work yourself, focus on one small area at a time. Complete it before you move on to the next. Otherwise your entire yard will be torn up for longer than you’re probably comfortable with.
Start in the back and move forward to avoid damaging completed work. Do work at your yard’s boundaries or fencelines before tackling more-central areas.
Taking action before you break ground
Before you begin your landscaping project, call your local governing body — town council, zoning board, homeowners association, or any other likely agency — and ask what regulations apply and whether permits are necessary for the work you’re planning. Tell them what kind of job you’re undertaking; chances are, you’ll have some red tape, including permits and permission, to get through.
You may also want to let your neighbors know what you’re planning — before a backhoe arrives. Also, before beginning your landscape project, consider which tasks may be too time-consuming — or require too much expertise — for you to tackle alone. Keep reading for more about who to contact and what to remember.
Dealing with City Hall
Local restrictions vary greatly from one place to the next, as the neighbors of the Sultan of Brunei found out when he painted his Beverly Hills palace hot pink and added statues of naked dancing girls along the street. Your plans, of course, won’t come close to those of His Highness, but you’ll still have to clear them with the authorities before you proceed. In many communities, for instance, the height of a fence is a matter of law. Better to find out ahead of time that 5 feet (1.5 m) tall is the limit before you invest in 6-foot (1.8 m) privacy fencing. Ponds and pools, even small ones, may require a fence to keep neighborhood toddlers or delivery people from wandering in. You may need to have an inspector check your work. At the very least, you’ll likely need permits for erecting any kind of permanent structure.
Calling before you dig
You’ve probably seen it on a million little signs plastered to telephone poles or set along the byways: “Call 811 before you dig.” Utility companies have a lot going on under the ground, including gas and water mains, electric lines, fiber optic cables, and so forth. If you think the cost of bricks is high, wait until you get the bill for slicing through a cable! Play it safe, even if all you’re doing is planting a tree.
Follow the advice of those cautionary signs to get the okay from those companies or utilities. They usually send someone out to have a look and flag the danger zone.
Keeping the neighbors happy
Keep peace in the neighborhood with a very simple action — talk to your neighbors, before heavy equipment arrives. Let them know what kind of work you’re planning. They’ll naturally want reassurances from you about noise, debris, whether it might affect their property, and how long you think the project might take.
Some neighbors are as territorial as some dogs about their own places. Be sensitive to how your changes may affect them. Before you plant a row of 12-foot (3.6 m) evergreens or put up a privacy fence, consider whether you’ll be blocking their view or creating a shade problem for them. Put yourself in their shoes and determine whether your improvements will be a positive thing for them, or your neighbors will be left staring at the ugly backside of your new fence or swatting mosquitoes attracted by your garden pool.
Preparing your property
Here are a few practical things you should do before the landscape makeover begins in earnest, to minimize disruption and mess:
1 Complete all exterior home repairs.
2 Complete all exterior painting and power-washing of the house and outbuildings as well as fences you plan to keep.
3 Call an arborist to attend to existing big-tree issues: removal (including stump grinding, if applicable) and removal of lower limbs and pruning of damaged or diseased branches.
4 Call in the professionals for an in-ground irrigation systems before any other landscaping work is started (see Chapter 5 for full details).
5 Attend to necessary grading as well as water-flow or flood-mitigation issues (see Chapter 4).
Doing It Yourself or Calling in the Big Guns
As handy and enthusiastic as you are, you probably can’t do it all. Before you tackle a new project, such as laying a patio, assess your physical strength and your skills, and how trainable you are. Surf websites, tune into HGTV, watch YouTube videos, and read more in how-to books. Then take a merciless look at your biceps and your already jam-packed free time, and decide whether you and the task are compatible.
Even if you’re a beginner, with a little dedication and energy, you can have success with the following projects:
Making a path of wood chips or gravel (check out Chapter 7)
Laying a brick, flagstone, or concrete paver walkway (see Chapter 7)
Planting small trees, shrubs, perennials, and other plants (refer to Part 3)
Installing sod or spreading grass seed (see Chapter 16)
Planting a groundcover (flip to Chapter 16)
Building a raised bed (see Chapter 10)
Installing outdoor lighting (see Chapter 10)
Building a lightweight shade structure, arbor, or trellis (see Chapter 10)
Making a bench or planter (see Chapter 10)
Installing a garden pond or other water feature