Landscaping in Robbinsdale.

Small city lots on a grid, many with alley access at the rear and mature trees front and back. Genuinely rolling around Crystal Lake and Lakeview Terrace, which sets it apart from the flat cities either side of it.

Robbinsdale is older than the suburbs around it and the landscaping shows it. Houses from the 1920s and 30s carry plantings that have been added to by five or six owners, layer over layer, until the original design is unrecoverable. The useful work on those properties is editing rather than adding — deciding what is worth keeping and clearing the rest, which usually reveals a better house than anyone expected was under there.

The ground around Crystal Lake and Lakeview Terrace actually moves, which is unusual for this part of the metro. Real slope means water runs rather than sits, so the failures here are erosion and washout rather than standing water. Loose material on a Robbinsdale slope needs a properly set edge or it ends up at the bottom of the yard after the first heavy rain.

Alley access is common and it is often the best route to a back yard, which changes what is possible. Where the alley is usable, equipment can reach ground that would otherwise be hand-work only, and that makes larger back-yard projects viable here that would not be on a comparable lot without one. It is worth checking before assuming a job has to be done by wheelbarrow.

The bungalows and Tudors have a scale problem that ramblers do not. These houses have real architectural detail near the ground — stonework, porch piers, window trim close to grade — and overgrown plantings hide exactly what makes them worth looking at. Cutting plantings back to reveal the house is often more valuable than anything new that could be planted in front of it.

Century-old trees are the defining feature of these streets and they dominate everything below them. Root plates extend far past the canopy, the shade is deep for most of the day, and autumn leaf volume on a small Robbinsdale lot is out of all proportion to the yard size. Working with those trees rather than against them is not a preference here, it is the only approach that holds.

The mature canopy here means autumn cleanup runs later and heavier than in the newer suburbs, and the leaf volume on a small Robbinsdale lot is out of proportion to its size. Timing the work to when the trees have actually finished rather than to a date is what avoids paying for it twice, and that can be well into November.

Downtown Robbinsdale has grown into a genuine destination, and the streets around it get foot traffic that purely residential blocks do not. Front yards near the centre are seen closely and often, which rewards detail — clean edges and correct proportion carry further there than any amount of planting does.

The frequent mistake on Robbinsdale's older houses is adding rather than editing. These properties have been landscaped by five or six owners in turn, and the instinct is to layer something new over the result. What almost always works better is removing until the original structure of the house is visible again, and then deciding whether anything new is needed at all.