Seattle has plenty of homes packed onto small properties. Townhomes take that a step further. You build up, fit more living space onto a smaller footprint, and still get a little outdoor space of your own.
For people working in tech, raising families, and trying to buy in a neighborhood they like, that can make sense.
We work with a lot of townhouse customers. And the landscaping problems are familiar. Weeds, overgrown shrubs, blackberry creeping along the fence. A smaller yard can still have a substantial mess.
That was the situation at our customer Blake’s home.
Blake is a software engineer. He has code to write and time he wants to spend with his wife. Fighting blackberry in the backyard isn’t how he wants to spend his free time. So he hired us to take care of it.
We deep cleaned the backyard within the fenced area. Trimmed the shrubs, cleared the unwanted growth, and removed a long patch of blackberry growing along the boundary between the house and the fence.
Small space. Plenty of work.
The blackberry had taken up room in a yard that didn’t have much room to spare. We cut it back, cleared the area, and hauled away the debris. Once that growth was out, we could work through the rest of the cleanup and prepare the beds.
Blake also had a struggling lawn. Rather than keep that lawn as another thing to maintain, we converted it and the existing garden bed into a bark-covered area.
That was the goal: give him and his wife a cleaner backyard with less ongoing work.
We used medium bark for this project. It’s one of our regular choices for garden beds because it gives the space a clean finish and helps suppress weeds. There are other options, depending on the look and use you want.
But bark goes on after the cleanup. It doesn’t replace removing the existing weeds and blackberry, and it won’t stop every new shoot. You still need to watch the area and deal with growth as it appears.
For Blake, the change was straightforward. Clear the blackberry, trim the shrubs, clean up the yard, and replace the struggling lawn with a surface that better suited how he wanted to maintain the space.
You don’t need a huge property to benefit from a proper cleanup. Sometimes reclaiming a narrow strip along the fence makes a big difference because that strip is a substantial part of your backyard.
Here’s the result. A cleared fence line, trimmed shrubs, fresh medium bark, and a backyard Blake and his wife can enjoy without keeping that failing lawn on their list.
