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Fairly soon after we purchased our current home, we knew that a significant landscaping project would be in our future. Although the wooded lot was pretty, it was a maintenance nightmare from the start.

The previous owner was REALLY into huge mulch beds that required hours of weekly weeding time. We were not.

And don’t even get me started on the leaf situation.

Since we’ve always been DIYers when it comes to maintaining our yard, this whole situation was just not going to work for our family. We did not have the necessary time to devote to maintenance, nor did we want to take on the hefty monthly fees associated with hiring the job out.

So we bit the bullet and decided to transform the mulch beds and woods into a regular lawn.

Our landscape looked like this the year we moved in:

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Over the course of 15 months, we transformed it into this:

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It required a herculean effort to make those changes, and it involved a ton of stress.

The scope of our project included:

• removing 100+ trees from the property
• regrading the backyard and corner of front yard
• establishing a new lawn
• creating five new mulched beds and installing a large number of new plants
• installing a new irrigation system.

Before we moved into our current house, we had never taken on a large landscaping project. We didn’t have any idea what to expect.

In hindsight, there are a few things I wish I had known before we embarked on this exterior journey — knowledge tidbits that would have helped me to preserve my sanity.

If you’re about to take on your own huge landscaping project this year, here are some things you should know in advance.

Related: Home Renovation Survival Tips to Save Your Sanity.

How To Survive a Massive Landscaping Project (aka Things I Wish I Knew Beforehand)

1. Prepare to Be VERY Persistent With Follow Up

In our journey to pin down a tree removal company and a landscaping company, any company that was responsive and actually returned a call/email was moved to the top of our list!

You see, during the course of our project, we discovered that most landscaping professionals are not great with returning phone calls or emails. In fact, it was downright maddening to get them to actually come to our house to discuss the project and get an estimate for the job.

If you know this upfront, it will be less annoying. Just expect that you will need to follow up repeatedly with most vendors.

2. Carefully Think Through the Order of Landscape Project Steps

It didn’t occur to us until we were about to schedule the installation of our new irrigation system that perhaps we should wait until the yard level/grading is completed first (two separate companies were completing these two phases of our project so it was up to us to coordinate the scheduling).

It might have been disastrous to have the irrigation system installed first and then bring in heavy equipment that would be digging around the pipes and moving earth all around.

If you are using multiple vendors for various phases of your project (and you are serving as “general contractor”), communicate with each of them about the overall scope of your project so that they can advise you about the best order to complete each project phase.

This can save you time, money, and lots of forehead smacking.

3. There WILL Be Collateral Damage to Your Landscape & Your Home

During the tree removal process, our internet cable was cut by the stump grinder.

To add to the fun, the tree removal guys damaged our neighbor’s driveway and sprinkler system with their Bobcat (good times).

We also lost a small ornamental tree (that we had planned to keep) when a 60-foot oak tree was dropped on our front lawn and landed on the ornamental tree.

Know that there will be some collateral damage when you are making huge changes to your landscape (which involves heavy machinery on your property for days at a time).

Talk to your vendor ahead of time to learn how they will handle these situations when they inevitably occur.

4. Your House Will Be Covered In Filth When Your Landscaping Project Is Complete

This is true especially if stump grinding is part of the process.

Budget for a whole-house power wash and window cleaning after project completion.

5. Project Start and Completion Dates are “Fluid”

So you’ve put a project start date on your calendar — I hope you used a pencil!

That date is very likely to change, based on the weather and how the weather affects the vendor’s completion of jobs that have been scheduled before your job.

Weather can be your best friend or worst enemy during a landscaping project.

The final phase of our project was initially scheduled to take place the week of Labor Day last year. We were pretty miffed when a late summer storm caused our project to be delayed by a week. But it actually ended up being a huge blessing, since we experienced a monsoon-esque storm the day after our project was initially scheduled.

If the new beds and lawn installation would have taken place as planned, we would have been standing inside our house in tears as we watched all of the newly installed grass seed and mulch wash away from our property down into the street.

And just because your project start date went ahead as planned doesn’t mean that the scheduled completion date will be met. Weather delays, sick employees, and unforeseen project snags may result in a lengthier time to complete your project.

The name of the game is “adapt”.

6. The Changes To Your Landscape Might Seem Jarring At First

Everyone in the family knew about the landscape plan in great detail, but seeing the plan “on paper” vs. seeing it come to fruition in real life were two very different experiences.

I was NOT prepared for my daughter’s tears when she arrived home and saw the trees removed from our yard for the first time.

My daughter eventually got over the initial shock of the change and is now on board with all the changes (since it means significantly less yard work for all of us).

When I first saw a group of trees disappear from the side and back yard, it was jarring. I knew that this is what we wanted but I needed a little bit of time to adjust to the new environment — and so will you.

Expect to feel an initial pang of fear or regret when you start to see those trees topple down or that large swath of earth moved.

Everything will be o.k., I promise!

A Home Improvement Project Tracker is a Must!

The last piece of landscaping project survival wisdom I’ll share is to grab a binder and create a home improvement project tracker that’s devoted exclusively to your landscape project.

If you’ve been hanging around the blog for any length of time, you know that I’m a huge fan of binders for project organization.

We used our landscaping project binder to manage all the moving parts of our project and store key information. Specifically, we used it to store:

• contractor proposals
• property sketches/illustrations
• plant selection options
• plant care guides
• invoices to be paid

Read about my other favorite tools for managing a home remodeling project here.

Want To See Our Landscaping Project Unfold on Video?

Head over to my Instagram account and look for the EXTERIOR story highlight and you can follow along the entire landscaping process (the portion that we tackled last summer — we took down about 60 trees in the fall of 2019 and I did not capture that process on Instagram).

You can also go on a tour with me around the yard on my IG TV Channel as I chat all about the changes and share my pure joy about all of the gorgeous new plants — and get nailed by our sprinkler system in the process!