Yard care covers everything on your property that isn’t turf — garden beds, shrubs, hedges, leaves, storm debris, edging, mulch, and hauling it all away. HD Landscape and Maintenance provides one-time and recurring yard cleanup across Portland, Beaverton, Aloha, and the surrounding metro. Oregon LCB #9977.
By Donavan Hesedahl, Founder & Owner · Last updated July 2026
Yard care is the half of property maintenance that gets quoted vaguely and then goes wrong. Not because the work is complicated — because nobody agreed on scope, volume, or who was hauling the pile away.
Here is how we scope it, when we schedule it, and the two local rules that shape a Portland-area cleanup more than most homeowners realize.
Both terms get used interchangeably. They shouldn’t be, and the reason is pricing, not vocabulary.
Lawn care is measured. It’s turf — mowing, feeding, aeration, weed and moss control. Priced off square footage of grass on a predictable schedule. Two lawns of the same size cost roughly the same to maintain. If that’s what you’re after, start with what lawn care in Portland actually requires.
Yard care is estimated. It’s volume, access, and disposal. A 3,000-square-foot yard under three mature bigleaf maples generates several times the debris of a 6,000-square-foot yard with no canopy — and takes longer, because the work is hand work and the material has to leave the site.
That’s why a yard care quote is harder to give over the phone than a mowing quote, and why any company willing to firm up a cleanup price sight-unseen is guessing. What you should get instead is a walk-through, a scope in writing, and clarity on whether hauling is in or out.
Most properties need both services. Most companies bundle them into one round number. Ask for the split — it’s the fastest way to tell whether a quote was thought through.
The scope we work to on a standard cleanup:
Two things sit at the edge of that list and are worth naming so nothing gets assumed. Gutter cleaning and pressure washing are handled under seasonal and specialized services. Tree work above a certain height, and anything requiring a climber, is separate. Bed redesign, plant selection, and drainage are landscaping and design rather than maintenance.
Twice a year as a baseline — a spring reset and a fall cleanup — with light touches in between. The Portland-metro calendar looks roughly like this:
February to March — the spring reset. Cut back the perennials left standing over winter, clear the winter’s accumulated debris, weed beds before anything sets seed, edge, and mulch. This is the single highest-leverage visit of the year, because weeds pulled in March are weeds that don’t seed in June.
April to June — light and frequent. Growth is at its fastest. Bed weeding and hedge trimming on a two-to-four-week rhythm keeps beds from getting away from you.
July to August — the quiet stretch. Little leaf drop, slower growth. Deadheading, spot weeding, keeping mulch depth honest through the dry weeks.
Late October to December — the big one. Bigleaf maple drops heavy and late here, and Douglas fir needle drop layers on top of it, packing into beds and gutter lines. This usually takes more than one visit. A single “fall cleanup” booked for early November tends to be too early for the maples and too late for the first round.
January — storm response. Wind and wet snow bring branches down. This is on-call rather than scheduled.
Recurring clients on a two-to-four-week rotation rarely need a heavy cleanup at all, because the volume never accumulates. That’s the actual argument for a schedule over one-off bookings — not the discount, the fact that nothing ever gets out of hand.
This one catches people out, and it’s on the property owner rather than the contractor.
Portland City Council passed an ordinance phasing out gas leaf blowers, and it took effect January 1, 2026. Here’s the practical shape of it:
Two consequences worth planning around. If your property is inside Portland city limits, a spring or summer cleanup has to run on battery equipment — so ask your yard maintenance company what they’re bringing before they arrive, because the notice comes to you. And if you’ve been quoted a “leaf blower surcharge,” the City has stated plainly that no such fee comes from them.
We already work with quieter, low-emission equipment where we can, which is partly why this transition has been straightforward on our end.
Hauling is the part of yard care most quotes hide, and the reason a cleanup can’t be priced like a mow.
Your curbside cart handles ordinary volume. Across the Metro region a yard debris cart takes leaves, weeds, vines, grass, and branches up to four inches thick and 36 inches long — and won’t take dirt, rocks, ashes, treated wood, or pet waste. One cart, collected weekly, comes with standard garbage service. There’s also a weight ceiling of roughly 135 pounds, which wet leaves and wet grass reach faster than people expect.
A real cleanup blows through that in one visit. A single fall clear on a maple-canopied lot can generate ten or more cart-loads. Which leaves three options: stage it across several weeks of collection, add carts, or haul it out. We haul, which means the debris is gone the day we finish rather than sitting bagged along your driveway until the truck comes.
For the west side, the relevant Washington County drop-off sites are Woodco on SW 170th in Beaverton, Pride Recycling on Tualatin-Sherwood Road, Tualatin Valley Waste Recovery at the Hillsboro Landfill, and the Forest Grove Transfer Station. In Portland it’s Metro Central on NW 61st. All of them require yard debris sorted clean of dirt, sod, stumps, and rock — mixed loads get charged as garbage instead of compost, at a higher rate. Sorting on site is part of the job, not an afterthought.
We do both. The choice usually comes down to canopy: heavily treed properties benefit from a rotation, open properties often do fine with two visits a year.
What moves the number on a yard maintenance quote:
If you’re comparing yard maintenance companies in Portland Oregon, the question that separates a real quote from a round number is simple: what’s the scope, and is hauling included? Our full-service maintenance breakdown walks through the line items, and how to choose a reliable landscaping company in Portland covers licensing and insurance checks.
We’re based in Aloha and run cleanup crews across Washington, Multnomah, and Clackamas counties: Beaverton, Aloha, Hillsboro, Tigard, Tualatin, Sherwood, Portland, Lake Oswego, West Linn, Oregon City, Wilsonville, Newberg, and Gresham.
What we’re dealing with varies across that footprint. Established Beaverton and Aloha neighborhoods around Cooper Mountain are fir and maple canopy, which means heavy late-fall volume and needle-packed beds. Inner Portland yards are small but access-limited — narrow side gates, no driveway, and street-tree leaf load that isn’t even from your property. Lake Oswego and West Linn bring slope, where getting debris uphill to the truck is most of the labor. Newer Hillsboro and Sherwood builds are typically low-canopy with young plantings, where the work is bed weeding and edging rather than leaf volume.
Full coverage is on our service area page, and ongoing yard work sits under lawn and yard care.
Lawn care is turf work — mowing, edging, fertilization, aeration, weed and moss control — priced by square footage of grass. Yard care is everything else on the property: beds, shrubs, hedges, leaves, debris, edging, mulch, and hauling. It’s priced by volume, access, and disposal rather than area, which is why the two appear differently on a quote.
It’s driven by debris volume, overgrowth level, bed footage, property access, and whether hauling is included. Tree canopy affects the price more than lot size does. We walk the property and quote a defined scope in writing — a cleanup can’t be priced accurately over the phone the way a mowing route can.
Twice a year at minimum: a February–March spring reset and a late-October-through-December fall cleanup, which usually needs more than one visit because bigleaf maple drops late here. Properties with significant canopy do better on a two-to-four-week rotation, which prevents the accumulation that makes heavy cleanups necessary.
Yes. Hauling and disposal are included in our cleanup scope, and we sort on site so material goes out as compostable yard debris rather than being charged as mixed garbage. A single fall cleanup on a treed lot typically exceeds a curbside cart many times over, so hauling is usually the practical option rather than the premium one.
Both. One-time cleanups suit properties that need a reset or are being prepared for sale. Recurring visits on a two-to-four-week or monthly rotation suit heavily treed properties, and stay smaller per visit because debris never accumulates. There’s no requirement to commit to a schedule for us to do a single cleanup.
HD Landscape and Maintenance LLC 6581 SW 192nd Ave Aloha, OR 97007
Phone: (971) 336-5520
Email: hdlandscapellc@gmail.com
Hours: Monday–Saturday, 7:00 am – 7:00 pm · Sunday closed
Oregon LCB Lic. #9977 · Licensed & Insured
Serving Portland and the surrounding metro, including Beaverton, Aloha, Hillsboro, Tigard, Tualatin, Sherwood, Lake Oswego, West Linn, Oregon City, Wilsonville, Newberg, and Gresham.