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Mill Creek was laid out as a planned city: curving streets, townhome slopes, golf-course edges, and lawns that were meant to look trimmed from the day the house sold. The soils are the soils of a graded subdivision, and the rain is the same county rain that finds every low corner. These yards need the beds put back, the hedge faced, and the corners emptied. They rarely need a land-clearing crew.
Snohomish County · ZIP 98012 · 2020 population 20,799
A reset to the original lines
We cut the shrubs that have swallowed the walk, pull the weeds, redefine the bark line, and haul the green waste. The lawn gets a mow if it is part of the visit. Irrigation heads are uncovered, not buried deeper.
It should look like the house just sold, not like a different design. If you want a different design, that is a renovation, and we bid it separately.
The ground in Mill Creek
The expectation here is a clean edge. Lawns get mowed on a schedule, aerated before they mat down, and fertilized lightly enough that we are not just feeding the moss. Townhome and hillside lots need low walls and tight paver work more than they need a big landscape renovation. Bark beds are there to keep the mulch line straight and the weeds out of the front that faces the street.
We still find the same drainage mistakes as everywhere else: downspouts tied to nothing, and patios pitched back at the siding. The difference is that a small failure shows, because the rest of the street is kept. Native shrubs fit the greenbelts behind the houses. A tropical plant list does not survive the first wet winter, and it will not match the neighborhood even if it did.
How we do the work
A cleanup is debris gone, beds redefined, and the hazards cut. We haul. A pile at the curb that sits for a month is not a finish. Brush, rotten wood, the fallen fence panel, the blackberries that took the side yard: that is the work.
We do not “clean” a yard by blowing leaves into the beds and covering them with a thin coat of bark. If bark is part of the visit, the bed is weeded first. If it is not in the bid, we do not fake it.
The walk-through is the scope. A bigger pile, a surprise blackberry thicket, or a tree that needs a climber changes the day, and we say that before we start rather than after the trailer is full.
What we look at first
- What is actually being hauled
- Blackberries, downed limbs, and junk versus a normal leaf drop
- Access for a trailer
- Whether you want it bare and ready, or just safe and tidy
Hauling
Included when we said it was included. Green waste, rotten fence boards, the bagged pile you already made. We do not take household trash, paint, or anything we cannot legally dump as yard waste. Ask before you add a mystery pile.
Ready for the next thing
A good cleanup ends with edges you can mow and beds you could bark. If the next step is renovation, we leave the yard ready for that instead of dressing it with mulch we are about to dig through.
Blackberries
Cut to the ground and hauled, with the understanding they return from the roots. A cleanup is not eradication. A follow-up, or a dig-out if the patch is small, is how you actually get rid of them. We will say which you bought.
More from this crew
- Yard cleanup across Snohomish County
- Tree and shrub pruning in Mill Creek
- Beauty bark in Mill Creek
- Landscaping in Mill Creek
- Pressure washing in Mill Creek
- Yard cleanup in Bothell
- Yard cleanup in Lynnwood
- Yard cleanup in Everett
Sources for the climate and the water
- USDA plant hardiness map for choosing plants that can take a Snohomish County winter.
- EPA WaterSense on watering less once a lawn or a new planting is established.
- EPA Soak Up the Rain on keeping roof and yard water from becoming someone else’s problem.
