Landscaping & Exterior Services in Arlington, MA
Arlington is a hill. That single fact explains more about landscaping here than anything else on this page.
From the top of Arlington Heights down through the Center and out to the flats of East Arlington, the town drops a couple of hundred feet — real elevation, not a gentle roll. Water knows it. Everything that falls on the Heights is heading downhill toward Spy Pond, Mill Brook and eventually Alewife Brook, and it will pass through somebody's yard on the way. A large share of the calls we get in this town are described as a lawn problem, a mulch problem or a basement problem, and are actually the same problem: water moving through a property that was graded for a different century.
The rest of Arlington's character is the canopy and the grid. Mature street trees over dense single-family and two-family blocks means shade, root competition and leaf volume that suburban lot owners never deal with. Add a Town Meeting that takes its trees and its ponds seriously, the Minuteman Bikeway cutting diagonally behind hundreds of back yards, and the Mass Ave corridor carrying the whole town's traffic, and you get a place where the right answer is rarely the generic one. We have been working it since 2005.
Everything Here Is Downhill From Something
A slope does two things to a landscape, and neither of them is subtle. It moves water fast enough to carry material away, and it delivers that water to whoever is below. On the Heights, the usual complaint is that mulch ends up in the driveway, beds scour out, and the lawn browns first because rain leaves before it soaks in. Three streets down, the complaint is the opposite: standing water, moss, a lawn that never quite dries, and a foundation getting more moisture than it was designed for. Same storm. Same hill. Opposite symptoms.
Contractors treat these as planting problems because planting is what they sell. Regrading a swale, extending a downspout to somewhere useful, or building a short wall to terrace a slope is less profitable than installing plants that will die of the underlying condition in two years and need replacing. We would rather fix the grade first and plant into ground that can actually hold what we put in it.
The canopy compounds it. Arlington's mature street trees are one of the best things about the town and they are quietly hostile to turf — dense shade, a mat of surface roots competing for every drop, and an autumn leaf load that will smother a lawn if it sits. Sun-loving grass sold as a New England blend is the wrong seed for most yards on these blocks. Fine fescues handle the shade and the root competition. On the genuinely dark spots under a big canopy, the honest answer is a shade bed or groundcover rather than a lawn we both know will fail.
Where You Are on the Hill Changes the Job
This is the first thing we work out on an Arlington estimate, because it decides the whole approach.
| Where you are | What the water does | What actually works |
|---|---|---|
| Arlington Heights / Turkey Hill | Sheds fast. Rain leaves the lot before it soaks in and takes topsoil, seed and mulch with it. | Terracing and short retaining walls, deep-rooted plantings, heavier mulch that stays put, and beds cut across the slope rather than down it. |
| Arlington Center / Jason Heights | Mid-hill. Water arrives from uphill neighbors and slows down as the grade eases. | Intercept it above the house — swales, corrected grade away from the foundation, downspouts extended to somewhere that is not the side yard. |
| East Arlington / near Spy Pond and the brook | Flat and low. Everything that came down the hill has nowhere left to go. | Drainage first, planting second. Dry wells where they make sense, regrading, and species that genuinely tolerate wet feet instead of ones that merely survive one season. |
What We Do in Arlington
Full exterior service, but weighted toward what this town actually needs rather than a generic menu.
- Drainage and grading work — swales, dry wells, downspout discharge, and correcting slope away from foundations
- Retaining walls and terracing for the steep lots on and below the Heights
- Shade-appropriate lawn renovation and overseeding under a mature canopy, with fine fescue rather than sun-blend turf
- Spring and fall cleanups sized for Arlington's leaf volume, hauled out and composted rather than bagged at the curb
- Weekly and bi-weekly mowing for single-families and two-families
- Paver walkways, patios and steps built to hold on a grade through the freeze-thaw cycle
- Fencing, including the back-yard runs along the Minuteman Bikeway corridor
- Mattress pickup and recycling, and snow plowing and ice management on Arlington's steeper driveways
Where We Work in Arlington
What We Do in Arlington
Arlington — Common Questions
Water pours into my yard from the property uphill. Is that fixable?
Usually, and it is one of the most common jobs we do in Arlington. You cannot stop your uphill neighbor's water from arriving, but you can control where it goes once it does — intercept it above the house with a swale, correct the grade so it moves around rather than against the foundation, and give it a route out. What does not work is planting something thirsty and hoping. We look at the whole path the water takes, not just the wet spot you can see.
My property backs onto the Minuteman Bikeway. Does that complicate work?
It changes access, mainly. The bikeway is not a service road — we are not driving equipment or dropping material on it, so everything reaches the back yard through your lot or by hand. It also means fence work and rear plantings happen in view of a very well-used path, which most owners care about. We plan the staging for it up front so your job does not turn into an obstacle for people using the path.
Can I have a tree removed from my Arlington property?
It depends what tree and where. The shade trees in the strip along the street are public trees under Massachusetts law regardless of who planted them, and they are not yours to take down — that is a town process. Trees fully on private property are a different question, and towns around here vary in what they regulate. Rather than guess at Arlington's current bylaw, we confirm the rules for your specific tree before anyone touches it. Arlington takes its canopy seriously and so do we.
Does living near Spy Pond change how you treat my lawn?
Yes, and it should. Everything that runs off the lawns around Spy Pond and along Mill Brook ends up in the water, and nutrients feed exactly the algae that make a pond worse every summer. Massachusetts already restricts phosphorus in lawn fertilizer, and close to the pond we are conservative beyond that — right rate, right timing, nothing applied before rain, and no application to the impervious strip along the road where it washes straight into the storm drain.
We Also Serve
Serving Arlington Since 2005
Free on-site estimate anywhere in Arlington. Call (508) 271-5655 or request one online.