By Neat & Tidy Landscaping
Landscaping costs, contractor pricing, estimates, project planning, and hiring advice for homeowners. Learn what professional landscaping costs and what affects the price of yard cleanup and restoration.
Every day in landscaping feels like a new episode of a TV show. I’ll meet a homeowner in Seattle, then someone in Bellevue, then someone in Issaquah. They all have their own lives and their own stories, and for a brief moment—sometimes just during an estimate—I’m part of one. I’m not saying I’m the hero … Read more
I’ve seen this before, and I’ll see it again. A homeowner wants bamboo removed. They start searching online, read a few articles, and try to figure out whether they can do it themselves, how much a contractor will charge, and why the quotes are so high. If you’re still at the stage of deciding whether … Read more
If you want to save money on an invasive plant removal project, the basic principle is simple: control what you’re asking the crew to do. It works like any other service. If you order more, you pay more. If you order less, you pay less. But with blackberry, ivy, and bamboo, you need to know … Read more
We see overgrown yards almost every day, and there are different degrees of it. A townhouse might have one neglected garden bed. A medium-sized house might need the lawn cut and the shrubs brought back under control. Then there are large properties that have been neglected for years, sometimes because the home was rented out … Read more
Lawn improvement is straightforward work for us, but the right approach depends on the yard. A thin lawn with patches of healthy grass is a different project from a lawn that needs to be removed and rebuilt. That difference matters when you’re comparing quotes. One job might involve mowing, dethatching or aerating, adding soil where … Read more
On just about every bamboo job we look at, there are two areas: the main stand of bamboo and the runners spreading away from it. Sometimes our customer owns the main stand, and the bamboo is moving into the neighbor’s yard. Other times, the neighbor owns it, and our customer is dealing with shoots coming … Read more
Bark is one of the simplest ways to give a garden bed a clean, manicured look. A lot of customers ask us to install it as part of a full yard cleanup. We weed the beds, trim the shrubs, prune the trees, rake and haul away the debris, blow off the hard surfaces, and spread … Read more
Guys, we work on all kinds of yards: small yards, large properties, steep slopes, overgrown lots, formal gardens, and wooded landscapes. We’ve quoted and serviced just about every style. And one thing keeps coming up: the simplest yards are usually the easiest and least expensive to maintain. One summer, I spent some time in Vancouver … Read more
We get a lot of estimate requests that we can’t even bid. Sometimes the scope doesn’t match our services. Sometimes the price doesn’t match the budget. All in all, the customer needs work that they simply can’t afford. That’s the plain truth. I recently looked at a property in Ballard where a multigenerational family had … Read more
Don’t Forget the Yard When You’re Calculating What a Fixer-Upper Will Really Cost You’ve found a house you like. The neighborhood works. The schools work. The commute works. The house needs some updating, but that’s part of the opportunity. Maybe the kitchen needs $20,000. The bathroom needs work. The roof has a few years left. … Read more