Landscaping in Charleston is live oaks, palmettos, and water that has nowhere to go. Yards on the peninsula and the islands sit low. A bed piled against a raised-house skirt, or soil stacked at a slab in West Ashley, sends moisture into the crawl or against the brick. Salt spray burns plants that belong in the Upstate. Shade under a live oak is a different garden from a sunny fill lot in Summerville. Mosquitoes use every clogged gutter and every pot saucer after a summer rain. Start with drainage, not with flowers.
Those oaks are not shrubs. Pruning a limb off a roof is not the same decision as taking the tree down. Ask how the work stays off wires and off a neighbor's piazza on a tight peninsula lot, and whether the brush actually leaves. Roots heave walks and invade beds. Palmettos drop fronds that clog gutters and hold moisture against a roof edge. A mowing visit should not become a felling because a saw was on the truck. Say if the tree stays.
Growth barely stops. A mowing rhythm has to survive weeks of daily rain and weeks of harsh sun. Ask what is skipped when the yard is saturated, whether clippings stay, and whether pine straw, leaves, or oak debris are included. Irrigation on sandy island soil is a different layout from a clay pocket inland. A broken head is not a new zone. Freeze shutdowns are rarely the point here. Salt in the spray and standing water are. Do not import a mountain winterizing ritual you do not need.
New planting should name size and who replaces a plant that dies while it establishes. Choose for salt and wet feet near the marsh, and for shade under the oaks. Any regrade that traps water under the house needs its own sentence. After a hurricane, limb cleanup and stump decisions are separate from the weekly cut. Debris against a foundation is both a yard problem and an invitation to rot and insects.
Say mow, oaks, beds, drainage, or irrigation, and say which part of the city. Landscaping in Charleston should keep the marsh and the rain from living under the house. Call the number on this page.