Landscaping in Minneapolis.

Small, narrow and deep, almost always with alley access at the rear and a boulevard strip at the front. Flat to gently rolling, with real grade around Theodore Wirth Park and down toward the river.

We work the north-west side of the city — Bryn Mawr, Victory, Camden and the neighbourhoods around Theodore Wirth Park — rather than claiming the whole of Minneapolis. It is a genuinely different job from suburban work: narrow lots, alley access, boulevard strips owned by the city, and neighbours close enough that keeping a tidy site is part of the work rather than a courtesy.

The boulevard — the strip between sidewalk and street — is city land, not yours, and what can be done there is limited regardless of who maintains it. It is also the hardest ground on any city lot: salted all winter, snow-piled on top of that, compacted by pedestrians, and usually shaded by a mature boulevard tree. Treating it as its own problem with its own plant choices is the only approach that works.

Alley access is the defining logistical fact of a Minneapolis property. It is frequently the only way to reach a back yard with anything larger than a wheelbarrow, and whether the alley is paved, wide enough, and clear on the day changes both the cost and the schedule. We confirm the route before quoting rather than assuming one exists.

The housing stock is a century old and built close to the ground, with stone foundations, porch detail and window trim near grade. Overgrown foundation plantings hide precisely the features that make these houses worth looking at, and clearing them back usually improves a property more than anything new that could be planted. The soil beneath decades of dense planting almost always needs rebuilding first.

City lots are narrow and deep, which produces long, thin back yards with tall neighbouring houses on both sides. Light reaches them for only part of the day, and it moves across the yard as the season changes. Planning for that pattern — rather than for the light on the afternoon someone happened to look — is what separates a back garden that fills in from one that thins out every year.

City lots have their own seasonal constraint: where the alley is the only access, spring work waits for the alley to be passable, and in a hard winter that can be weeks after the yard itself is ready. Autumn cleanup runs late because the boulevard trees are mature, and the leaf volume on a small city lot is considerable.

Street parking, permits and neighbours are part of the job on a city property in a way they are not in a suburb. Where a truck can legally sit, for how long, and whether the alley stays clear all affect the work — and the site has to be kept tight because there are houses a few metres away on both sides throughout.

On city lots the persistent mistake is ignoring the boulevard. It is the first thing anyone sees, it is the hardest ground on the property, and because it is technically city land most homeowners treat it as nobody's problem. Choosing material that survives salt, snow storage and deep shade turns the least-considered strip into the one that changes the whole frontage.