Landscaping in Colorado is water, hail, clay or decomposed granite, and a season that can snow on a new planting. Front Range yards argue between bluegrass and xeriscape, and the soil often heaves when it is expansive clay. Tree lawns in older cities take street trees that lift walks and find sewers. Foothill lots are rock, pine, and scrub, with wildfire in the background of any plan that piles fuel at the wall. The western slope can grow fruit and still bake a plant that wants a wet spring. The high country has a short season and a heavy snow load on anything you stake. Wind on the plains desiccates evergreens all winter.
Say the job and the soil if you know it. Mowing, a hail-shredded bed, a grade that sends water at the foundation, a tree on the roof, or irrigation repair. Ask who maintains the system and who replaces a plant that dies in establishment. Hail can end a planting in one afternoon. A late freeze can end it in May. Ask whether the work changes grade. On expansive clay, a bed that traps water against the house is a structural problem, not only a gardening one. Ask about haul-away so debris does not become a rodent cover.
Keep limbs off roofs that take hail and snow. Ask how irrigation is separated from drinking water and whether a backflow device is part of the work. Mountain and foothill lots should say what is growing against the siding. Plains lots should say how wind and hail will be allowed to beat the new bed. Do not import a coastal watering schedule.
Hail will shred a new bed in one storm, and a late freeze will take the replanting. Ask for a plan that admits both, not a calendar copied from a longer growing season. Name whether the soil heaves. Expansive clay and a sandy foothill slope do not take the same grading advice.
Name the town, the soil, and the weather that already beat the yard. Call the number on this page.