We just moved into our first home in September. Apparently the previous owner over pruned the hedge that extends from the front yard and replaced with these emerald greens last spring. My understanding is that we won’t have privacy for quite a while, if ever, as it stands currently. I think they have grown maybe an inch since.

fence is the neighbors - they are lovely but would prefer to have a little more separation with the pool. Any advice would be appreciated! thanks!

Edit: thank you all for the wonderful ideas! So appreciated! We are in 6a, and can only have 6 foot fence which certainly would help but likely not enough due to the grade of the property. Neighbor has a motion activated flood light on his shed that goes off with a breeze and his pergola in the picture has BRIGHT blue party lights that are on all night starting at dusk that are a constant eye sore. In other words, if we could really fill out the sides that would have the most impact. Thanks again!

Edit: Thank you to everyone for your advice. I did a little digging around the stump and it’s a lot bigger than it appears in the pic. I’m going to go with the stump grinder. It’s $100 for 4 hours. Feels completely worth it. Cheers!

I want to remove this stump. Doesn’t need to be the entire thing necessarily; I just want a level surface plus an extra 6-8”. Bear in mind I prefer to pay in sweat than dollars.

- How much work would be involved?
- What tools would be best for the job? (my inclination was rent a chainsaw)
- Are there any gotchas or best practices to know of?

Thank you in advance for any advice you guys have.

This is not our house this is the inspiration pic for what we would like to do.

We built a gazebo / pergola on our patio this weekend but it is blocking our kitchen window & we also want to lift it to add a ceiling fan & fit a hammock chair so we want to lift it 2 feet & we saw this as inspiration.

I had a landscaper come out & he quoted us $2000 for the four pillars he said he would “make out of blocks” so I’m not sure how that will look & my husband thinks the price is too high but it will take four guys to lift the heavy ass thing on to the pillars.

My questions for you fine people of Reddit are

1. what do you think of the quote? Does $2000 feel appropriate?
2. do you have suggestions on how we could possibly DIY, we are not especially handy but are motivated & have a good support system of helpers if need be

Thank you!

Attempted to build a paver patio for the first time by myself. It’s not perfect but it turned out nicer than expected. Still need to seal it with polymeric sand, but it’s supposed to rain for the next 5 days.

Update:

(Shouting while taking shelter behind my 20 foot tall privacy hedge)

I HEARD YOU! I WILL NOT BE TAKING DOWN THE TREES!

I was not expecting so much traction.

I admit: this was a hasty post, fueled primarily by frustration at the puppy procuring yet another piece of trash from the hedge that captures everything the wind blows (a blessing and a curse! ESPECIALLY if we have a wind on garbage day). She gets to trash that I cannot pickup due to the density and size of the trees, and I have was feeling exasperated having to cleaning up the yard so frequently.

But I get it…. It is a beautiful and near priceless hedge.

I will be keeping the hedge and, despite my children’s REQUEST (oops), will likely move the fruit tree then plant a few more arbor vitae because that little gap is really awkward.

Thank you for all of your feedback!

Lastly, I do want to defend my point of just how much space these trees take up. It’s not just a straight line of trees but rather a bowed line that at its widest point protrudes 10+ feet into the yard. Regardless of this fact, I agree with the vast majority of you: I would miss the privacy, shade, and sound barrier this small forest provides and thus I will be keeping it.

Original Post Below
(First please excuse the scattering of dog toys).

We inherited this towering hedge from the previous homeowners, including that gap in the middle. There were 3 nearly dead nine-bark shrubs planted in the gap of which i removed two then planted a fruit tree at the bequest of my kids.

It has been really difficult to access the back side of the hedge for trimming and suddenly this spring there has been a large amount of overgrowth into the neighbor’s yards. In addition, getting a puppy has shown me just how much…. Potential…. Is back there behind the hedge (aka I underestimated just how much trouble she’d be able to find in the hedges… birds, bunnies, trash etc). Not to mention, the hedge is like 3 trees deep and takes up a ton of space in our yard, I could do so much more if the arbor vitae were not there!

I do love the privacy and shade that we are afforded…. But my mind is also racing with creative ideas of all I could put in their place.

Am I nuts for wanting to remove this? And more importantly what spirits will haunt me if I do?

Thanks for your help!

This has been a slow transformation of my back yard since we bought the house in 2018. It was overgrown, with the only decent size area for the kids to play in taken over by an unruly "flower" bed and some arbor vitae. I added some rock areas to transition off the patio main patio that is about 4" higher than everything around it (you can see some of the slope in the rock beds if you look at the base of the retaining walls.

Pic 1-side yard before

Pic 2-side yard after

Pic 3-back yard before

Pic 4-back yard after

Pic 5-back corner (where side & back meet) before

Pic 6-bavk corner after

Pic 7-rock area 1 in progress

Pic 8-rock area 1 finished

Pic 9-rock area 2 in progress

Pic 10-rock area 2 finished

FYI, don't be dumb like me and fill your yard debris bin halfway up with soil and then try to move it. As you can see in pic 9, that did not go well. And yes, I knew better before I did it. I was just being an idiot.

This project was my first at the company. I remember I had just graduated highschool with no prior manual labor experience, so the July heat and my virgin blistered hands made my first two months a real struggle to survive.

My job was to stack the pavers next to my foreman to keep him “fed” to keep laying them quickly. I tried wearing gloves because I rubbed off my fingerprints carrying the pavers all day, but they taught me that real men don’t wear bitch mittens.

I loved my crew, my foreman was the best guy I have ever had the pleasure of working for. Around a year in, I herneated two of my disks on the job, and that was the last of this amazing job.

I still miss the smell of early morning dew on the soil of a summer jobsite.

First time building retaining wall. I’m dry fitting my cap pieces just to see what they are going to look like. I’ve got one corner in the wall, and when I put the cap pieces on, I’m not thrilled with how they gap. What’s the general solution to this? Cut them all to fit? Accept the gap? How do I make this look as nice as possible?

Update edit: sounds like the best way to keep it looking sharp is to cut the caps to round the corner properly. I’ll look up some videos on how to do this. When I put i
This question in ChatGPT, it more or less told me to just reposition them to minimize the gap and accept it. I’ve put a lot of work into this wall, so I wasn’t really happy with that answer.

Thanks for all the replies

I am in dire need of support to make my wife happy and create a gravel patio that her TikTok algorithm has exposed her to. I am having trouble with some parts to it because of course my area where I am doing it is not a clean slate like most on TikTok.

First, I have a small concrete sidewalk leading to the garage. Is it possible to just put limestone rock over it? Do I still try to cover it with landscape fabric?

Second, the lawn had some holes in it that my dogs made. ChatGPT is saying I should use paver base to cover them before I place the fabric. Should I instead use cheap top soil to level everything out?

Third, this is my first time place blocks. The driveway is somewhat jagged but there is still a defined line. Do I place the blocks on the edge of the driveway or in the dirt?

I appreciate anyone’s support in getting this project done. Last thing, does anyone have any good recommendations for reliable sources for future projects? Either books or websites?

Getting close to the planting portion of a huge front yard project and having trouble trying to figure out what to plant in this spot.

There will be railings on the brick stairs but we’d like to have something tall that blocks the view from the street so we don’t run into package theft issues. (don’t worry the new railings match the old ones (-; )

We used to have a japanese aucuba but we didn’t like the look of it and it constantly grew into the driveway plus it needed to be removed to widen the stairs. Before and current photos added for reference. New width is about 3 feet from brick stairs to concrete driveway.

Would prefer something evergreen for year round privacy and it’ll need to have a narrow upright growth habit. We were interested in a picea glauca pendula but I’m worried the spot is too small and I don’t want to risk any root intrusion into the brick or concrete. Located in zone 7b, clay ish soil, spot is sun/part shade gets a few hours of morning sun then some shade then a few hours of afternoon sun. Thanks in advance! (-:

I’ve never done any hardscaping before which may be obvious by the quality of my work 😅

I know it’s not perfect, but all in this cost me around $2750 CAD all said and done (trees, blocks, soil, gravel, etc, included)

I live in a HCOL area in Canada

There is no way to get a skidster back here, lugged everything down in a gorilla cart by hand

It’s hard to tell but the little front bed is centred in the middle of wall but that ugly shed blocks the view and will be getting ripped down next weekend

There’s about 30 tubes of landscape block adhesive in there too

How much do you think I saved by doing it myself?

I have SO MUCH RESPECT for people who do this all day everyday, I’m a wanna be body builder and this completely kicked my ass

If tradesman drank whey instead of beer they’d all be fckn huge

I'm normally just a lurker but I've seen what you can do. Long Island New York. I'm digging for a tree to plant in my yard. I find this. House is 100 years old. I put the water in the clean off the pipe. It was completely dry before that. Do I really have to call someone to check it out? Can I just plant my tree instead? The exposed part of the pipe is 11 inches diameter.

I know the right thing is to call 811 and see if there are utility lines on the property and if not call a plumber see if they know what it is but I'm very tempted to just plant my tree on top of it because it's the perfect spot for it.

WWYD

Chihuahua pic in the hole just for fun because I said to him Sammy don't fall in the hole and he immediately fell in the hole. It also gives you an idea on how deep it is which is not very deep

He also collects pines and maples, he's had me working on this pine for several years, and this year he decided to shrink all his other pines. It has been exhausting and the pines are weeks ahead of schedule.

I want to plant a tree where the stub is and I am torn between Red Oak and Red Maple but as the space is reduced, I don’t know which one to choose.

I have a big Cypress on the other side of the patio as you can see in the pictures.

Original AI post and image: https://www.reddit.com/r/landscaping/comments/1h9smfm/how_can_i_recreate_this/

About one year ago I saw this AI post of the brick wall with this profusion of different purple hued flowers and wanted to try to recreate it. The retaining wall was completed around April of last year so it has been approximately 12 months since I started planting things. The post is AI so it's hard to know exactly what is planted so I tried to pick options that would work in my zone. This is the first year of growth and I'm realizing many of the plants I planted do not bloom at exactly the same time so it is hard to achieve the same look the AI photo achieves.

Plantings include:

1. Caradonna Salvia (planted as quart)
2. May Night Salvia (planted as quart)
3. Phenomenal Lavender (plants as 3 gallon)
4. Cats Pajamas Nepeta (planted as quart)
5. Green Mountain Boxwood (planted as 3-5 Gallon)
6. White candytuft (planted as a super quart? it was slightly bigger than a quart but smaller than a gallon)
7. Wee one Lavender (planted as 2"x2" pot)
8. Onyx and Pearl (planted as 6" pot)
9. Bolero Hyssop (planted as quarts. Planted 2 and only one survived :( )
10. Marshmallow Yarrow (planted as quarts)
11. Globemaster Allium (planted 10+ bulbs last fall)
12. Mount Everest Allium (planted several bulbs and a few live plants last year they all came back but only 3 actually flowered :( )
13. Light Blue White Bee Delphinium (planted as quarts in groups of 3)
14. Rooguchi Clematis (planted as 6" pot they're growing up the wire diamond pattern along the brick.
15. Sweet starlight hydrangea tree (planted a 5 gallon. This is visible in the last photo leafed out but not yet blooming)
16. Storm cloud amsonia (dug up from a neighbors yard who wanted to get rid of it. It was roughly a 3 gallon. I only have 1 but want more as they were one of the first blooming spring plants)

Still have more to plant and need to move some things that have overcrowded each other and want to think about how I can add more purple because right now it is a lot of green while spring plants are finishing up their blooming and summer plants are just getting ready to start blooming.