Montana ground. New rules. One contractor who knows both.

Yes. Current requirements call for the top six inches of a site to be screened topsoil, which is a soil logistics problem before it is a landscaping one.

There are three ways to handle it. Strip the site and haul everything off, then buy screened topsoil back and truck it in, which means paying for the same dirt twice. Stockpile it in a corner and screen late, once the site is built out and there is nowhere to work. Or screen it on site the day the site is stripped, stage only the volume the plan calls for, and let the excess become an asset rather than a disposal cost. We do the third one, at roughly [X] yards per day.

Most new homes on an acre are built with ten to twenty thousand dollars set aside for landscaping. A full property with irrigation and fencing usually lands closer to eighty to one hundred thousand.

That gap catches most people by surprise, and finding out late is the worst way to find out. The number moves with grading needs, irrigation scope, how much hardscape is involved, and plant sizes. It can also be phased across two or three seasons, which is what most people end up doing once they see honest numbers.

Bozeman is under permanent watering restrictions and rates continue to rise, but most residential overwatering comes from a handful of fixable things nobody has looked at in years.

Common findings: heads watering sidewalks and driveways, coverage gaps that get compensated for by running everything longer, leaks below grade that never surface, and a controller still running the schedule it was set to when the house was built. Smart controllers that adjust to local weather help. So does soil health, because a plant with what it needs draws less water than a starved one. A starved plant and a thirsty plant look nearly identical, which is why the instinct to add water so often treats the wrong problem.

January or February for a project you want built that same year. By the time the weather turns, most of the season is already booked.

Winter is when there is time to design properly and time for you to think about it. Starting in November or December for the following spring is not too early. Starting in May usually means waiting on next year's calendar, or accepting whatever slot is left. Early planning also lets us order plant material against real availability rather than hoping something is in stock when we need it.

A landscaper installs plants and turf. Site services means one company handling the whole scope: soil, grading and drainage, irrigation, turf establishment, planting and hardscape, and the annual care afterward.

The practical difference is who is accountable when something goes wrong. On a split scope, the irrigation contractor, the fencing contractor and the landscaper each have a reason to think the problem belongs to someone else, and you are the one standing in the middle. That is why we named the company what we did, and it is the standard we hold ourselves to.