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What is the best order / project plan to install landscaping for a new home?

I will be starting with a rough graded lot and rain gutters with downspouts. I need to do the following things, what is the best order?

  1. Bury corrugated drain tile for gutters to drain
  2. Fine grading on lot to prepare for grass/sod, add topsoil as needed
  3. Install underground sprinkling
  4. Grass seed or sod
  5. Install landscape beds and plants
  6. Plant trees

I might be forgetting some things also, but that's all that is coming to mind right now.

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  • I made a numbered list out of your tasks as it's easier to reorder & refer to items than it is to bullets.
    – FreeMan
    Commented Oct 20, 2021 at 16:54
  • Are you doing these things yourself or is a landscaping company doing some/all of them? How big/old are the trees you'll be planting?
    – TylerH
    Commented Oct 20, 2021 at 17:48
  • Possibly doing some of it myself, but mostly hiring it out. Trees will probably be small enough to be installed without a skidsteer, though perhaps not.
    – derekdata
    Commented Oct 21, 2021 at 0:24

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I'm no expert, but logic seems to dictate:

  1. Plant trees (was 6)
  2. Bury corrugated drain tile for gutters to drain (was 1)
  3. Install underground sprinkling (was 3)
    This includes the stub-outs for the sprinkler heads, but not the heads themselves*
  4. Install landscape beds and plants (was 5)
  5. Fine grading on lot to prepare for grass/sod, add topsoil as needed (was 2)
  6. Grass seed or sod (was 4)
    Install the sprinkler heads*

This seems to me to move from the most intrusive to least intrusive.

The big ticket item - planting trees could involve delivery trucks and or skid steers driving through the yard to bring the tree to a big hole dug in the yard.

Once that's complete, you'll be tearing things up to bury the drain tile and install sprinkler lines.

Then you'll be moving potentially heavy loads of hardscape material (stone retaining walls? big bags of potting soil or mulch?) to the flower beds.

Finally, do the finish grading and planting/sodding.

Any switching of the order, to my mind, means interrupting more delicate work with more coarse work. What happens if you get an irrigation line where you discover you need to dig a hole for a tree, or you drive a skid steer across the soft ground above a freshly placed drain tile and crush it?

* Hat tip to Greg Hill for pointing these items out in the comments.

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  • 1
    Great analysis. To add a little finer detail, sprinkling is often installed in two steps: piping and valves are trenched and buried early in the project, then immediately before seed or sod the sprinklers themselves are installed. Really the trees, drains, and sprinkler part 1 can be mixed in any order. During the interim the flexible "funny pipe" sections that attach each sprinkler are left sticking out from the ground. This minimizes the chance of sprinklers getting lost (buried) or damaged while other work is carried out.
    – Greg Hill
    Commented Oct 20, 2021 at 17:07
  • I did say I wasn't an expert, @GregHill :)
    – FreeMan
    Commented Oct 20, 2021 at 17:17
  • Thank you so much, this is very helpful!
    – derekdata
    Commented Oct 21, 2021 at 0:33

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