Marking Easements and Utility Lines
Before breaking ground on your project, use special landscape paint (or powdered chalk, sprinkled flour, flags, or stakes and string) to mark the locations of all utility lines. If you don’t, you may cause damage or accidents.
Underground utilities lie at different depths, from a few inches to several feet. Ask your utility company about the depths as well as the locations of buried lines–otherwise simple landscaping tasks, like trenchdigging, may prove hazardous.

Protecting Plants and Structures
Fence off everything you want to keep intact–including trees and shrubs, structures, pathways and surfaces. Use plastic fencing (lower right), hay bales or colorful tape–anything that will keep equipment or vehicles away.
Protect the root systems of trees by fencing around their driplines or farther out if possible. If you’ll be disturbing the ground inside a dripline, consult a certified arborist for ways to safeguard the tree.

Controlling Weeds
You’ll avoid problems later if you eliminate tough perennial weeds like Bermuda grass and quack grass.
Spray them with a systemic herbicide. It will be most effective in warm weather and when the weeds are growing actively. To eliminate weed seeds that will sprout later, water the area to make them germinate. Once they sprout, in a week or two, remove them with a hoe or spray them with herbicide.
Repeat the cycle until no more weeds grow. The entire process may take 8 to 12 weeks.

Rough Grading
If your yard slopes, creating a flat space can require a lot of earth moving. Use the calculator (right) to determine how much dirt you’ll be moving.
Enter the length and width of the flat space you want. Next, enter the depth of soil to cut (a retaining wall over 3 feet may require a permit). Finally, enter the total rise of the section you’ll be working on.
Ideally, the volume you cut will equal the volume you fill so you won’t need to buy or dispose of extra soil.
Rough grading creates the basic contours of your landscape. You can do it with just a shovel or with a landscape contractor and a bulldozer. Follow these steps:
1. Mark out features on the ground. Use landscape paint, sprinkled flour, or stakes and string. At high and low points, place stakes marked with the number of feet to cut or fill.
2. Create terraces by cutting and filling.
3. Make cuts for footings. The footing depth depends on what you’re building and how deeply the soil freezes in your area. Consult your local building department.
4. Grade for walkways, patios, lawns and plant beds. Soil under these features should slope at ¼ inch per foot to guide rainwater away from your house or toward catch basins. Mark the grade with stakes, string and a line level, then dig and rake accordingly, removing enough to allow for the thickness of the pavement.

Improving Drainage
A properly draining yard is critical to a good landscape. Make a mistake here, and you could flood your house or wash away parts of your yard.
Check to be sure that the ground around your house–including paving–slopes away at a minimum of ¼ inch per foot, for a distance of at least 6 feet from the foundation. If you suspect a problem, call a landscape contractor or soils engineer.
Also provide drainage at the bottom of hillsides, from behind retaining walls, and away from low spots.
If you live on a steep slope or if your home is lower than other parts of your property, have a landscape contractor or soils engineer design your drainage system.

Controlling Erosion
Water gushing from downspouts can damage your foundation and erode soil from around plants. If downspouts empty too close to your house, try placing splash blocks beneath them, or lead downspouts into tight-line drains or catch basins.
On gentle slopes, cut lengths of landscape fabric and pin them to the ground to keep soil from washing away, or use mulch or soil-holding plants.
On steep or terraced slopes, get help from a landscape architect or soils engineer.

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