Skill Guides: Which Yard Jobs You Can Learn Yourself

This guide sorts the yard jobs a homeowner can realistically learn alone, from edging to a first low dry-laid wall, by how much a first attempt can cost. It is for a reader deciding where to start, and it says what each job asks of you before you pick up a tool.

Start with how much a mistake can cost

Yard jobs fail in two different ways. Some can be redone in an afternoon, like a line of edging that wanders and can be cut again. Others are set into the ground, and a mistake there means lifting it out before you can start over. So the question to ask before any job is not only whether you can do it, but how recoverable the first attempt is. That is the test I use to order the skills below, and it is the order I would learn them in.

A first try should be a job you can undo before the weekend is over.

Keep that in mind as you read the comparison. The order of the whole job, from the problem to the finish, is worked through on the planning page, so this guide covers only the skills themselves.

Five skills, compared by how forgiving they are

Learn these first

Edging, and pruning a shrub whose bloom time you already know. A cut that goes wrong is usually small and visible, so you can see it and stop before the next one.

Where a first attempt is forgiving and where it is not

Seeding a lawn and laying pavers sit in the middle, because timing and the ground underneath decide the result more than the hand does. Low dry-laid walls sit at the other end. The first course sets the line of everything above it, so a wall that has to come down is the hardest mistake on this list to undo.

Learn these last

Paver work on a bare base, and any wall that holds back soil or carries weight. Check the base and the figures further down before you start, and ask the town’s building department about any wall that holds back a slope.

For the lawn side of this list, a step-by-step video on routine lawn care shows the upkeep that comes before any renovation.

How to Care for and Maintain Your Lawn, a video from the Great Home Ideas channel on YouTube.

What should decide the job, most important first

Three things decide how a first attempt turns out, and they come in this order. The season is first. A sound job done in the wrong window can still fail, and pruning shows this most clearly. UMass Extension’s pruning guide says to prune spring-flowering shrubs right after they bloom, to prune shrubs that bloomed late in the previous spring or summer in late February or March, and to stop pruning after mid-August, because new growth stimulated that late can be damaged by winter.

The base is second. Under a paver walk or patio, the base carries the load and the drainage, and it is the part nobody sees once the job is finished. The figures further down give the minimum base that the industry guide sets.

Size and height come third. They decide whether a job needs a permit before it starts, and the planning page sets out where that question belongs in the order of work.

A claw hammer and scattered nails on a weathered wooden board — A claw hammer and scattered nails on a weathered board. Fasteners carry the load in a wooden build, so they are worth checking before anything is built onto them.

The mistake I would warn a first-timer about

Seeding goes wrong when it starts on the wrong date and on ground that has not been tested. The late-summer window in the figures below is the one to plan around, and the soil test should come before any lime or fertilizer goes down, not after. A thin seeding started in a hurry is not a shortcut, so I would rather a first lawn job waited for the right weeks.

Walls and pavers go wrong when the ground underneath is treated as an afterthought. A dry-laid wall can sit on native soil, but its lean and its first course need to be right before anything is stacked above them. Pavers look finished on the day they are laid, and it is the base that shows up later, so I would check the base before I checked the surface.

Fixings carry the weight, not the wood

Look at what holds a wooden thing up before you admire the wood. On a porch swing the chains and the frame do the work, and the same is true of a deck rail or a pergola beam. A first attempt at anything that bears a load is best checked at its fixings first.

A wooden porch swing hanging from chains beside a bicycle against a log cabin wall — A wooden porch swing hung on chains beside a bicycle. Trace the load from the seat up to the frame and you reach the fixings.

Four numbers to check before you start

4 inches

The minimum compacted base for an interlocking paver patio or walk on well-drained soil, according to the Concrete Masonry and Hardscapes Association’s construction guide, which asks for a thicker base where soils are continually wet or weak.

1:6 to 1:10

The lean of a dry-laid stone wall, measured as run to rise, in Fine Homebuilding’s guide to stone walls. That is a trade magazine’s figure, not a code.

August 15 to September 15

The late-summer window that UMass Extension’s lawn renovation guide gives for renovating or seeding a lawn, which it says generally yields the best results.

72 hours

The notice Massachusetts requires to the Dig Safe system before any excavation, not counting Saturdays, Sundays or legal holidays, and no more than 30 days ahead. Paver edges and post holes count as digging. The General Laws, Chapter 82, Section 40A sets it out.

Each of these is a starting point for one job, not a rule for every yard. Ground, drainage and a town’s own rules can change the answer, so where a figure depends on a town, check that town’s office before you act.