How big is your yard? Ours is 600sf. We rented a rototiller from Home Depot and planted grass seed ourself. We're in the city and we removed rocks, glass, chains, a huge old piece of concrete that at one point probably contained a flag pole or basketball hoop, etc etc etc. Was it hard work? Yes. Was it totally doable? Yes. You need to understand the proper schedule for seeding, feeding, weed prevention, etc but that is easy. Once you have the lawn growing in buying a planting a few plants/flowers is not hard.

You want to trade? My fixer upper has roof, brick and window issues. I agree with everyone else you are overreacting. I'd trade my house for yours any day and be happy to do the landscaping myself because I love gardening. If you love the house itself it is not worth throwing away over the yard.

Think of it as a blank canvas. I would not sod the whole yard but put in some raised bed and get ready to plant in the spring. You can have a wonderful time growing veggies and herbs.

I'm amazed by the fact that people in my neighborhood don't do their own landscaping. As far as I can tell, we are the only people in the entire neighborhood that mow our own lawn, trim our bushes, and weed the area around the bushes and shrubs. Guess what OP - you CAN do your own landscaping and it is not at all difficult. There are stores like home depot and lowe's, and gardening centers in VA and MD that sell things like sod and bushes and weed killer.

Granted, it is November right now and you'll have to wait until the spring to do these things, but you don't need to finance landscaping or hire a landscaper to do any of this. Just do it yourself!! Yes it'll cost money, but if you had enough money to renovate the whole house, chances are you'll have enough to slowly reinvigorate your own yard over a couple of months.

How difficult is it to pull out a significant amount of ivy?

you can have a yard by spring, just put down sod around march/april. here it costs about $3-4 for 10 square feet. you can either do it yourself or hire someone to do it. we've done this in two yards and turned out great.

It shouldn't that expensive to have the rock and clay removed. You can re-sod yourself next spring or hire someone. Full scale landscaping is expensive but if you break and down and avoid the decorator flowers/shrubs then its not bad. If you do it yourself, make sure to rent the right equipment.

OP, you can fix the yard in a season or two. Though ideally, someone should have told you to fix it and reseed this past fall - it's too late now to grow grass until spring, I think.

I spend a fair amount of time on my lawn and when a neighbor's tree fell during the derecho, all of my weekends spent working on the lawn were for nothing. Once the giant oak tree was removed, 2/3 of my back lawn and 1/3 of my front lawn (where construction debris had been piled) were completely bare, except for the crabgrass which had aggressively moved in. I think I did actually cry.

And then I got out there every weekend and pulled crabgrass by hand. I created a new garden where a (now fallen) tree had been before and extended another garden. I aerated the soil and put down ProSeed OneStep, a mixture of grass seed, fertilizer and mulch, and then overseeded with regular grass seed. A couple of weeks later, where almost the entire back yard had been bare, there was gorgeous new grass. (so pretty I wished i'd pulled out the old grass too.) The yard looks amazing.

In March, get out there and prune whatever needs pruning, remove any plants or shrubs you dislike and clear away the rubble. In April, do what I suggested to reseed the lawn. Then water on nights there's no rain. Lay out some flower beds and plant some flowers, then mulch around them so the colors really stand out. (perennials should come back yearly, but often annuals are more vibrant.) Geraniums and petunias and vincas work well in my yard. Some azalea or hydrangea bushes would be good too. Good luck!

Start here are get two free trees to get you rolling: http://energysavingtrees.arborday.org/?PartnerCode=06903

We bought a very, very dilapidated house when DD was just 2 months old. We had no money and no child care and no landscaping funds, but I got out there and put that baby in a pack and play and worked my tail off every day in the yard. I literally cleared out decades of dead brush and trees and branches, edged new garden beds, weeded and sodded and seeded and planted...my husband and I built a new wooden fence by hand using wooden lattice from Home Depot. You can do it. It will be hard but amazingly worth it.

Anonymous wrote:Shop around and find a company that uses cheap day laborers. I think they all do but the blue collar good old boys businesses over charge. For things like lawn and mulching you don't need a phd worker.

Don't use illegal immigrant labor.

I feel for you OP and have been in a similar situation. Landscaping work is more difficult than people think if you are at a point where the yard and areas have not been maintained for years. It can also be costly. Regrading for example or putting down sod. It also can be time consuming and difficult to know where and how to get all the equipment. One thing to do is look on craigslist for someone. They are often cheaper and you can get them to do the jobs piecemeal.

Shop around and find a company that uses cheap day laborers. I think they all do but the blue collar good old boys businesses over charge. For things like lawn and mulching you don't need a phd worker.