Landscaping in Denver is expansive clay, a tree lawn, hail, and a choice between thirsty turf and a yard that can take a dry week. Street trees lift sidewalks and send roots into laterals. Alleys drain poorly when a new bed blocks them. Chinooks and hard nights heave edging. Hail shreds a garden in an afternoon and then the sun returns as if nothing happened. Japanese beetles add a summer problem on certain trees and roses. Watering is a real constraint, and a bluegrass habit copied from a wetter city shows up on the bill you did not intend to discuss and on the soil you did. Keep the call on the plants, the grade, and the irrigation hardware.
Say the job. Mowing, a limb on the roof, a walk that heaved, a bed that ponds against the foundation, or a system of zones that no longer matches the yard. Ask whether the work changes grade. On this clay, trapping water at the basement wall is how you buy a wet spring. Ask who maintains irrigation and who replaces a plant killed by hail or by a late freeze. Ask about haul-away so debris does not become mouse cover in the alley. Keep limbs out of gutters. A clogged gutter becomes an ice problem on the fascia.
Tree lawns are not the same as a private back yard. Say if the work is in the strip, because snow storage, foot traffic, and the city trees change what can survive there. Xeriscape is not an empty gravel pan. It is a plant and drainage plan that still has to handle a cloudburst. Mention beetles if they are why the roses failed, so the visit is not only a mowing pitch.
A heaved walk and a wet basement are landscape facts in this clay, not only concrete facts. Say if the soil has already moved so the grade is designed for swell and shrink, not for a stable lot that Denver often does not have.
Name the soil behavior you have already seen and the work you want. Call the number on this page.