Landscaping in South Carolina either fights salt, fights red clay, or fights a lawn that will not stop growing. Live oaks and palmettos belong to the Lowcountry. The Upstate deals with hardwoods, pines, and slopes of clay that slide after a clearing. Sandhills yards drain fast and scorch. The Grand Strand adds salt spray that burns plants chosen from an inland catalog. Grade is the part that touches the house. A bed piled against brick or a raised cottage skirt traps water in the crawl. Start there.
Limbs over roofs become hurricane debris and ice loads, depending on the county. Pruning is not removal, and removal is not stump grinding. Ask how branches stay off the service drop and whether the brush leaves the lot. A mowing crew should not decide to fell a live oak because the saw was handy. Those trees are part of the shade and the soil, and cutting one is a decision you make on purpose. Roots lifting a walk are a smaller, separate ask.
Mowing schedules have to name months. Growth along the coast barely pauses. The Upstate actually slows. Ask what happens in a week of tropical rain and in a dry spell. Clippings, edging, and leaf or pine-straw cleanup should be separate lines. Irrigation is its own visit: a broken head is not a new zone. Freeze protection for pipes matters in the foothills and is often wasted theater on a sea island. Say which you need. Do not import the other.
New plants should be sized in the writing, with a clear word on who replaces one that dies while it establishes. Salt-tolerant choices near the marsh, shade plants under oaks, and sun plants on a Midlands lot are not interchangeable. Any change that sends water toward the foundation or under a raised house needs its own sentence. Mosquito-heavy low spots may be a grading problem before they are a spray problem.
Say mow, trees, beds, or irrigation, and say the town. Landscaping in South Carolina should keep water, salt, and limbs in their place relative to the house. Call the number on this page.