Landscaping in Minneapolis is a short season on clay, with boulevard salt and frost heave doing most of the damage. Walks and steps lift and become a trip on the first ice, which arrives early. Downspouts that end at a bungalow foundation put melt into the same basement that takes a burst pipe in January. Grade is the plant that matters. Shade from boulevard elms and tight lots leaves hostas where a sunny plan wanted turf. Lake wind on open stretches burns evergreens.
Soil sloping back to the foundation beats any shrub. A narrow side yard still needs a path for water that is not the neighbor's window well. Heaved squares are not a style issue. Salted boulevard grass dies in the same strip every spring, and seed without a soil change dies again. Say if the tree in that strip is sending roots at an old lateral. The strip may not be yours to redo. Limbs on the roof come before a bed, because those limbs also feed ice dams.
Choose plants for shade, clay, salt, and a season that closes hard. Deer and rabbits edit winter twigs. Mulch on the trunk rots bark. Irrigation and hose bibs must be shut inside or blown out, or the landscaping call becomes the frozen sill cock this city already knows too well. Fall planting races a freeze. Spring planting races mud. Containers on a stoop are not a yard rebuild.
If the basement is already damp, or a north-wall faucet has frozen, say that before you talk about flowers. Water at the wall and a pipe in the cold bay are related through grade and through heat, and they are still different trades. A slipping walk beside a rambler entry is the urgent hardscape. Edging and a mowing path decide whether the yard stays keepable after the first summer. If you are only planning, say so.
Lead with drainage, a heaved walk, a boulevard tree, or a limb on the roof. Say whether melt is already in the basement. Minneapolis will not stretch the planting window. Call the number on this page.