Landscaping & Lawn Care
Landscape Design & Installation in Aurora, IL
A landscape plan is mostly a set of decisions made in the right order. Where water goes. Where the beds stop and the lawn starts. Which shrub gets to be six feet wide in ten years and which one has to stay under a window. Make those calls on paper and the install is straightforward. Skip them and you end up moving plants two seasons later because nothing had room.
Lux Landscaping Construction designs and installs as one job, which means the person planning the bed knows what it takes to dig it. We measure the yard, work out the layout with you on site, put a plant list and a price in writing, then build it. Estimates are free, and the written scope names the plants and quantities rather than describing them.
Who this is for
- New construction with a bare lot and compacted builder fill, where there is nothing to work around and everything to establish.
- An older yard with overgrown foundation shrubs, beds that have crept out of shape and nothing left in scale with the house.
- Homeowners who want a plan for the whole property but intend to build it over more than one season.
- A specific problem area: deep shade under maples, a hot west wall, a narrow side yard, a slope nothing will hold.
Scope
What the work covers
- Site measurement and a record of sun, shade, slope, drainage patterns and existing plants worth keeping.
- Bed layout marked out on the ground so you can see the shapes before they are cut.
- A plant list with species, sizes and quantities, matched to the conditions in each bed.
- Bed excavation, removal of spoil, and soil preparation with compost and topsoil.
- Planting of trees, shrubs, evergreens, perennials and grasses at correct depth and spacing.
- Cut edges or installed edging, mulch to finish, and a thorough water-in.
- Debris cleared, hard surfaces washed down, and a walkthrough covering care for each type of plant.
Options
What you can choose
How much plan you need
Some yards need a drawn plan for the whole property, with beds, hardscape and phasing laid out together. Many need only a bed layout, a plant list and a price. We will tell you which yours is rather than selling drawings you do not need.
Plant palette
Evergreens give a bed structure in February, when nothing else does. Flowering shrubs and perennials carry summer. Native grasses and prairie perennials handle clay, wind and drought here with very little help once rooted. Most beds want some of each, weighted toward whatever you will actually look at from inside.
Bed definition
A spade-cut edge is clean, costs least and needs recutting each year. Steel or aluminum edging holds a line far longer. A paver or natural stone border is a permanent curb that a mower wheel can ride on. The choice sets how much maintenance the bed asks of you.
Phasing
On a large property we can stage the work: grading and the front of the house first, then the back, then finish planting. Each phase is priced separately and left looking complete. Anything that needs machine access through the yard gets scheduled before the areas it would have to cross are planted.
How we do it
The sequence on site
Walkthrough and measurement
We walk the property, measure, and note the conditions that will decide plant choice: exposure, overhead canopy, where snow gets piled, where runoff crosses, how wet the low ground stays. We also ask what you want to spend weekends doing, because that changes the plan.
Layout and plant list
Beds are laid out and shown to you, on the ground or on a plan, before anything is cut. The plant list is built to mature size, not to how it looks the day it goes in. You get it in writing with the estimate.
Bed preparation
Turf and old mulch are stripped, the bed is excavated, and compacted subsoil is broken up. Compost and topsoil are blended in to open the clay. This is the step people skip, and the one that decides whether the planting is still thriving in five years.
Planting
Holes are dug wide rather than deep, root balls are set with the flare at or slightly above grade, and circling roots are teased out before backfilling. Spacing follows the plan, which means a new bed looks a little open at first and right once it fills in.
Mulch, water and walkthrough
Mulch goes on at an even depth, pulled back from trunks and crowns rather than mounded against them. Everything is watered in deeply so soil settles around the roots. Then we walk it with you and go through watering by plant type.
Local conditions
What northern Illinois changes about this job
Planting into clay
Dig a deep hole in Fox Valley clay and you have made a bucket: water collects in it and the root ball sits in standing water. We widen instead, score the sides of the pit so roots can leave it, and keep the root flare high. On the worst ground, raising the bed is the honest answer.
Spring and fall planting windows
Cool air and warm soil in early fall make it the best stretch of the year to plant woody material in northern Illinois. Spring is nearly as good. Summer planting works but depends on someone watering through heat, so we say so up front rather than after.
Winter exposure and salt
Open suburban lots here get hard winter wind, and the ground along drives and walks collects de-icer runoff. Broadleaf evergreens scorch in those spots and some shrubs simply will not tolerate the chlorides. We keep sensitive plants off the pavement edge and use tougher material where spray is unavoidable.
FAQ
Landscape Design & Installation questions
Do you do design without the installation?
Our work is set up as design and build together, because the detail that matters in a plan is the detail that comes from having dug the ground. If you only need a layout and plant list to work from, say so at the walkthrough and we will talk about what makes sense.
Will the new beds look sparse at first?
A correctly spaced bed does look open in its first season. Plants are placed for the size they reach, not the size they arrive at, so they fill in without crowding each other out. If you want fuller cover sooner, we can add annuals or tighter-spaced perennials between the shrubs and thin them later.
Can you work around plants we already have?
Yes. Mature trees, established evergreens and anything with sentimental value get noted at the walkthrough and designed around. Sometimes the right call is relocating a shrub rather than removing it, and we will tell you when a plant is too far gone to be worth saving.
What goes in the written estimate?
The bed areas, soil preparation, every plant by species, size and quantity, edging, mulch type and depth, and what is excluded. It is free. Having it itemized means you can compare it to anything else you are looking at line by line.
Free estimate
Ask about landscape design & installation
Send the address and a short description. We will arrange a time to walk the site, then put the scope and the price in writing.