Landscaping in Ottawa: front and back yards

Garden beds and edging, mulch and river rock, planting areas prepared and graded, gravel and stone areas, stepping stones, fire pit pads, and landscape restoration after drainage, fence or deck work, in front and back yards across Ottawa and the suburbs. Korvex also builds interlock, retaining walls and sod, so a bed can be planned with the walkway or wall beside it. One Google reviewer writes that the team has done hardscape and landscape projects for her. We lay the work out with you on the ground at the site visit.

Scope. Landscaping is the planting and surface layer: beds, edges, mulch, stone, gravel areas and the ground around them, in the front yard or the back. A complete backyard renovation rebuilds the whole back yard as one job, with demolition, grading, drainage, a patio, deck or fence and then the landscaping, in that order. Landscaping is often a job on its own. If your yard also needs a new grade or drainage, we tell you at the estimate.

Mulch suits beds with plants in them: it keeps the soil cool and moist and is easy to top up. River rock suits strips along the foundation, spots under downspouts and slopes where a heavy rain would carry mulch onto the walkway. Both need fabric underneath and an edge that holds them in. Many front yards use both: mulch in the planted bed, stone along the house.

It can, when the bed is built up higher at the wall than at the lawn. City of Ottawa guidance says a lot should slope away from the home, and that downspouts should discharge onto a permeable surface such as grass at least four feet from the foundation, never onto a neighbour’s property or the sidewalk. When we rebuild a bed along the house, the soil is reshaped to fall away from the wall first. If water is already coming in, our drainage and grading work looks at where it enters.

Landscaping is on the City of Ottawa list of projects that need no building permit. Two cases differ: steps, walls and landings that give access to the house need a building permit where the surfaces on either side differ by more than 600 mm, and any landscape structure over 1 m high needs an engineered design. Grading still has to respect the lot’s drainage design under the City’s site alteration by-law. Korvex checks your plan against these at the estimate.

It depends on your address. The City of Ottawa requires an open air fire permit for a fire pit, campfire or wood-burning outdoor fireplace on private property, and it considers open air fires unsafe in most urban areas, so permits go to addresses that meet its density and lot-size criteria. You can check your address online with the City. Natural gas, propane and ethanol outdoor fireplaces need no permit when they are ULC/CSA approved and kept a safe distance from combustibles. We build the pad either way.

Yes, with care. In the urban area the City of Ottawa protects private trees 30 cm or wider measured 1.3 m up, and injuring a protected tree needs a City permit. A tree’s critical root zone reaches 10 cm out for every 1 cm of trunk, so a 30 cm tree reaches about 3 m. Beds near a large tree are laid out around its roots, with fabric cut around the trunk, as on the Barrhaven bed with its tree in a stone ring.

By the area of beds and stone, the material that goes in, how much old soil, sod or stone has to come out, any grading the yard needs and how easily the yard can be reached. Korvex Construction looks at the yard in person anywhere in Ottawa and the suburbs, and the written price follows that visit, broken down by part of the yard so you can adjust the scope.