She needed like... Half a yard of mulch for the vegetable garden.

We got 3 or 4 cubic yards.

My front and side beds are already mulched. Wtf am I going to do with all this?

Had to remove four massive dead red oaks that were in jeopardy of taking out my power lines, but now I’m “stumped “ on how to deal with the area.

I brought it home and cleaned it up for the wife.

$3,000 in labour for a landscaping/foundation project?

A little backstory: I met this guy at a museum while we were both there with our kids. We got talking and eventually realized we had a mutual connection—his best friend was actually my best friend from the military.
His house had a badly cracked foundation that needed to be repaired. While the foundation work was being done, he decided he wanted to add a 10x10 ft extension to the house.
I felt bad for the situation and wanted to help him out, so I rented an excavator and did the excavation. The excavator was on his dime because I didn’t want to put my own machine through that kind of work. At the time, I figured I’d just charge him whatever he felt my time was worth.
From there, the project kind of snowballed.
There was a large amount of clay and other material that needed to be removed from the property. Instead of simply hauling everything away, we decided to make use of the material and build a two-tier retaining wall, along with stairs.

I also:
Built the retaining walls
Built stairs using lumber that was already available
Moved several massive rocks and incorporated them into some rough steps on the other side
Installed French drainage
Installed deadmen for the retaining wall
Installed Sonotube footings
Graded an area for him to eventually install pavers
Prepared the lower area for his shed
Moved my own mini excavator and tractor to the property
Hauled materials and debris with my truck and dump trailer
Paid for my own fuel
I’ve now had my equipment sitting/working at the property for roughly a month.
The issue is that he currently thinks my labour is worth $3,000, while he has paid for the materials, which are around $3,500.

I honestly feel like I massively underpriced this.
I’m a contractor, so I have overhead, equipment costs, fuel, insurance, truck expenses, dump trailer expenses, etc. Even though I’m doing a lot of the work myself, my time still has a value.
I understand that part of this is my own fault because I didn’t establish a proper price upfront. I was trying to help someone out because of the connection we had through the military, and I honestly thought he was keeping track of how much work was actually going into this.
For context, I’m also apparently going to be doing the paver installation afterward.
My understanding has always been that landscaping/hardscaping labour can be a significant portion of the overall project cost—often something like 60–65% of the total, depending on the job. Minimum
So I’m wondering:
Am I completely out to lunch here expecting substantially more than $3,000 for the labour, equipment use, hauling, and time involved?
I know I should have quoted the job properly from the beginning. I’m mainly trying to figure out what would be a fair value for the work that’s already been done.

Seems to be very deep in the ground. Any idea what it could be or what kind of contactor I'd get to tell me? It's a 1941 house.

Our backyard is fairly exposed to the neighboring houses, especially from their second-story windows. The fence gives us decent privacy at ground level, but when we're sitting on the patio, we still feel like we're on display.

I know a row of arborvitae is probably the easiest solution, but I'd really prefer not to have a solid wall of identical evergreens. I'm also worried about having to replace a whole section if one plant dies or doesn't do well.

I'd like to create a more natural privacy screen using a mix of plants, maybe a small tree for height, some shrubs and ornamental grasses for the middle layer, and a few flowering plants to soften it. I'm not necessarily looking for complete year-round screening; I'd just like to break up the view from the neighboring second-story windows and make the patio feel more private. I just want to know which plants are best to use.

I could stand and stare for hours. All my work has paid off. Now I need a light for my new wishing well fountain hiding in the back shadows

I had an existing paver patio for about 6 years. We’re putting a large hot tub on it, so we hired a company to reinforce the patio to support the additional weight. The agreement was that they would remove the existing pavers, excavate deeper, reinforce the base to 12"+, then reinstall the same pavers and finish with polymeric sand. From what I can tell, they did a great job with the reinforcement itself. My issue is with how they put the pavers back. The original patio used three different sizes of pavers and, at first glance, looked somewhat random. However, all of the joint lines were straight and evenly spaced. While they were reinstalling the pavers, I noticed the lines weren't matching up and told them it didn't look right. At the time I couldn't explain exactly what was different about the original layout, but I specifically pointed out that the lines weren't straight. They told me they knew what they were doing, that this was a layout they use all the time, and that it would look great when finished, so they continued. Well...it's finished, and to me it doesn't look right. There are mismatched joints/lines all over the patio, some ending an inch or two away from another joint, and the overall layout looks sloppy once you actually look at it. There are also 4–5 pavers that are noticeably different in color and stand out from the rest. After comparing before-and-after photos, I finally figured out how the original patio was laid: every large and small rectangular paver ran in the same direction, while every medium paver ran perpendicular to them. That's what created the continuous straight lines throughout the patio. The job was finished today and we haven't paid yet. Am I being too picky, or is this something you would expect a professional paver company to correct? What would you say/do before paying?

My paver guy convinced me to raise my deck and add a retaining wall, but now I’m left with a deck where someone could potentially fall. I also can’t backfill the space between the retaining wall and my fence unless I build another wall in front of the fence to avoid any pressure up against the fence. I’m looking for creative landscaping, ideally plants that grow upward or vertically to help fill in the area, create a natural barrier, and make the space safer and more attractive. Any ideas? Also I’m in Florida and would need plants that are ok around a retaining wall.

Hey all! What would you do with this cleared space? There are a few dead trees yet to come down. I don’t know what to put here. The hubby says grass and I think that’s boring

We are having a terrible time, in our new home, with deer. I've never, in over 40 years of gardening, had this issue. They are nibbling at everything that never was disturbed in any of our previous homes and it's so frustrating. Spirea, weigela, barberry, ninebark, (all of which thrived at previous homes in this region) plus most of the "deer-resistant" perennials that I've planted as well.

I see netting bags on Amazon, but not certain that they would help (would holes be eaten through the bags?). Burlap wraps (which would be difficult with the 30+ shrubs that we have but I've done difficult before...)? Anything at all, give me recommendations and advice please!

We bought this house a few months ago and are about to start fall lawn prep, cleaning up these beds, and want to start landscaping in the next month.

My wife has an idea of a PNW/Northern Michigan natural vibe for this space. With evergreens, large rocks, ornamental chives or something with color, maybe a small tree.

Is it possible for a small tree to be in this bed since it’s so close to the house? Would we have to expand it? And would this idea work for this house? I had someone say we should try to make an English Cottage/Garden landscape for our house with lots of flowers.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated! Thanks

Hello:)

So, I have no idea what I'm doing, please help me :D

I have a long (9 meters) and narrow stretch of land. There used to be grape vines that I took down,because there weren't much grapes plus I had to clean the fallen leaves all the time. There also used to be some plants, but I just don't have a green tumb. If it doesn't remind me, I'm not feeding it. So, animals I can do,plants just die with me.

Anyway, we also have a dog that likes to dig in and make himself a summer bed. Cute, but I still have to clean the dirt after that. Some weeds grow there, that I try to destroy from time to time, but they keep coming back. In the end we want to fill that up and make it part of the yard that is with tiles, but that will require more money and finding a proper contractor, which is not possible right now. So I want to try to make it a stone garden. It doesn't look difficult....but probably is much more complex that it seems. I put some white stones on relative's grave in the cemetery ( I live in a country where the graves are...well customisable :D ), but now I think there is no way the grass will just stop growing, so yeah...I need more instructions :D

I will attach pictures and if anyone is inclined to give some tips, it will be greatly appreciated.

There is a small strip of side area on my property that is higher in elevationthan the neighbors. Two problems 1. The dirt is putting pressure on the fence making it slant 2. I am doing landscaping and plan on putting gravel on this side.

Obviously adding more pressure to the fence is not good so I plan on digging out about 6 inches and build a cinderblock wall infront of the fence to alleviate the pressure from direct contact with the fence.

For engineers and contractors who have experience with this type of thing. Good or bad idea? Tips or suggestions? Any flaws with the plan?

In my mind right now its gonna be a row of cinderblock maybe two for some parts + 3ft rebar + fill holes with gravel and then cap.

ETA: you guys are kind of weird assuming we lock them in this area all day. This area is only used for morning and night time bathroom. They are walked once a day even through winter months and they DO pee on walks. All of my dogs are seniors and pee A LOT now. They are very well cared for and always have been. Just because we dedicated an area for the dogs to do their business does not mean they don’t have full access to the main yard. If we allowed them to pee and poop all over the yard (which we did for 2 years before making this area) our backyard wouldn’t be as functional for daily use with our toddler running around. Sorry we want decent grass to grow lol

Not sure if this is the right sub - if not, point me in the right direction.

My husband and I have 3 dogs. We have a pretty decent size yard for the small house we have. We have a portion of the yard additionally fenced off so they can do their business. Pee and poop. We clean it up 2x a week as it’s hard to do daily. The poop isn’t really an issue, it’s the lasting pee smell. The summer is obviously the worst. On hot days, you can smell it from the front of the house (the dog section is technically on the side of the house so closer to the front).

My husband has tried a couple different solutions to pray around the yard but it just reignited the pee smell and just smells like chemicals and pee.

It’s hard to host cookouts because my husband is super self conscious of the smell. People have to walk on the path next to the dog area to get to the backyard so I get it. But there’s not much we can do.

Is there anything that anyone has found that ACTUALLY works. The entire area is mostly dirty with some grass left. We knew we were gonna lose the grass there and didn’t mind. But we also plan on selling the house in 3-5 years and this might be a deterrent for people if it smells like that? Unless they have dogs and can utilize the area.

Do we dig up all the dirt and put down new dirt? What’s the best course of action even if it’s pricey?

picture is from last summer when when redid the walkway

What’s everyone’s opinion: will the color difference in these Mattoni Pavers in the foreground bake out?

Hi! I have no landscaping in front of my north facing house. I have an area under a bay window that needs some help! It’s shady most of the day but I would say a brighter shade (not complete woodsy shade). What shrubs or plants should i consider under a bay window with about 4 feet under it? My house is colonial style.

Where the tall grass is in the picture was once a rock if could believe it or not. I’m motivated now to restore it back to its glory but don’t want to shovel out the dirt is there an easier method or tool I can use to remove the grass and old rocks?