Should we hire an *actual* professional?
For background, My husband and I bought our first home which sits on about a half acre, going out to a creek. The current back yard lawn area is small and really beautiful and it is our hope to extend it further to the creek. the problem is the current lawn is flat with a sudden drop of about 4 feet into a brush/english ivy nightmare. Now, I don’t mind having woods in the back and actually love the privacy but our issue is that there is a lot of standing water and makes the back yard very buggy… It is our hope that someday we can clear most of it to maybe extend the lawn, create new garden beds etc….but how?? I don’t want to hire some landscape guys to remove everything and dump top soil/grass seed just to have everything erode away, or have issues with flooding in the future. Do we have a landscape architect or an engineer to survey the area and give recommendations on the best way to fill the area (grading the lawn vs retaining wall, what we should do to make sure it doesn’t continue to turn into a swamp after spending thousands of dollars)? Who typically is able to help with something like this? I feel like this is a little beyond the scope of your run of the mill landscaping company…or am I wrong? I’m obviously very new to this and just want to make sure we’re not wasting a substantial money winging something like this, and want to do it right!
Or do I accept my fate and become a swamp witch?
For background, My husband and I bought our first home which sits on about a half acre, going out to a creek. The current back yard lawn area is small and really beautiful and it is our hope to extend it further to the creek. the problem is the current lawn is flat with a sudden drop of about 4 feet into a brush/english ivy nightmare. Now, I don’t mind having woods in the back and actually love the privacy but our issue is that there is a lot of standing water and makes the back yard very buggy… It is our hope that someday we can clear most of it to maybe extend the lawn, create new garden beds etc….but how?? I don’t want to hire some landscape guys to remove everything and dump top soil/grass seed just to have everything erode away, or have issues with flooding in the future. Do we have a landscape architect or an engineer to survey the area and give recommendations on the best way to fill the area (grading the lawn vs retaining wall, what we should do to make sure it doesn’t continue to turn into a swamp after spending thousands of dollars)? Who typically is able to help with something like this? I feel like this is a little beyond the scope of your run of the mill landscaping company…or am I wrong? I’m obviously very new to this and just want to make sure we’re not wasting a substantial money winging something like this, and want to do it right!
Or do I accept my fate and become a swamp witch?