Gardening in North Vancouver

Many experienced gardeners handle planting design informally — refreshing a border, choosing plants for shade or drought. Full redesigns with hard landscaping cross into landscaper or garden designer territory. A practical route: have your gardener sketch a planting plan and quote plants plus labour; escalate to a designer only for structural changes.

One-off jobs carry a premium: travel, quoting, and disposal aren't spread across repeat visits, and there's usually a minimum charge of 1-2 hours. Regular slots get the best hourly rate. If you only need occasional help, batching tasks into a single half-day visit twice a season beats calling someone out for each small job.

Choose low-maintenance planting (shrubs and perennials over annual beds), mulch beds to suppress weeds, keep hedges at a height reachable without platforms, and book a regular slot instead of crisis call-outs. Letting a garden slide is the expensive option — recovery visits cost multiples of maintenance visits.

A gardener maintains what exists: mowing, weeding, pruning, planting, seasonal care. A landscaper builds or rebuilds: patios, walls, turf laying, planting schemes, irrigation. Gardeners charge by the hour or visit; landscapers quote by project. Hiring a landscaper for weeding wastes money; hiring a gardener to build a retaining wall risks a bad wall.

For an average garden, fortnightly visits in the growing season and monthly in the off-season keeps things under control. Weekly only makes sense for large or high-maintenance gardens. A longer gap costs more per visit because overgrowth takes longer to clear — fortnightly is usually the sweet spot of cost versus tidiness.

General garden labor runs CAD $45-$85 per hour per person in 2026, with recurring maintenance visits for an average yard at $80-$200. Spring and fall cleanups — the anchor products of the Canadian market — typically run $200-$600 for a standard suburban lot including hauling.

The freeze-thaw winter dumps branches, matted leaves, and gravel from snow clearing onto lawns and beds, and everything must be cleared in a short window before the growing season. Demand spikes April-May; booking in March gets better pricing and scheduling than calling when everyone else does.