Landscaping in Pennsylvania is either a stamp of ground behind a row or a slope that wants to move. Philadelphia rowhouses are not Pittsburgh houses on hills. Behind a row you may have an alley, a fence you can touch from the kitchen, and a downspout that dumps in the only soil. On a hill you have steps, a retaining wall, a lawn that is not flat, and water that will find the uphill foundation if you give it any help. Detached yards elsewhere in the state are larger and still have to shed freeze and heavy rain.
Grade is the work that protects the house. Soil against brick, a patio pitched at a basement door, and a leader that ends at the stoop will wet a row cellar. On a hill, a wall that leans, a bed cut into the slope, and a downspout discharging on frozen ground will wet the buried wall. Say where rain goes and where snowmelt goes. Irrigation must be put away for winter or it becomes a burst line. Many row yards should not be irrigated at all. Say if you even have grass.
Trees are a roof problem when they rub a cornice or drop limbs on a steep roof. Street trees in the row may not be yours to cut. A tree on a slope above a house is a drainage and a root problem. Summer humidity grows lawns fast where lawns exist, then a dry spell stops them. Salt along steps and walks burns the edge. A weekly mow is a suburban or hill-lawn fact. It is almost meaningless in a rear court the size of a room.
Say cleanup, beds, trees, walls, or drainage. Say whether material can reach the yard without a flight of steps or a trip through the parlor. If the cellar takes water, that is the first sentence, not a footnote. Skip plant lists until the water path is clear. If all you have is containers on a roof deck, say that and do not ask for a mowing plan.
A party-wall court and a terraced hill are not one yard. Landscaping in Pennsylvania starts with the slope, or with the lack of one. Call the number on this page.