Thistle & VergeGarden & lawn care · est. 2011

Portland, Oregon · since 2011

Someone should
be keeping
your garden.

Not a truck that turns up when the grass gets embarrassing — a crew of 9 on a calendar, cutting at the right height, pruning in the right month, and hauling the clippings away. Lawns, borders and hedges, year round.

4.87
from 213 reviews
386
gardens under care
15 yrs
same yard, same trade
HOUSELAWN1,840 sq ft · cut N–SLAUREL HEDGE — 6 FT LINEBIG-LEAF MAPLE, 42 FTMIXEDBORDERSURVEY 14-B · SELLWOOD LOTMEASURED BY HAND · SCALE 1:96 · SHEET 1/1N
Fortnightly mowingHedge linesHand weedingCore aerationLeaf seasonBorder keepingBulb plantingIrrigation auditsFortnightly mowingHedge linesHand weedingCore aerationLeaf seasonBorder keepingBulb plantingIrrigation audits

The work

Six things, done properly

We do not fit patios, fell trees or lay turf on top of a problem. We keep gardens — which is a slower trade, and mostly a matter of turning up on the right week.

Lawn renovation

Most bad lawns are not dead. They are suffocating.

Portland clay compacts, moss moves into the gaps, and the standard answer is to spray it and hope. We pull cores instead — twenty holes to the square foot — sweep in a screened compost dressing and overseed in mid-September while the soil is still warm.

  • Six weeks from cores to full knit
  • Written watering plan for your own irrigation
  • Rye and fine fescue blend chosen for shade levels
Book a renovation survey
Before · June 2ndAfter · six weeks on
Moss-choked back lawn in Woodstock: scarified, cored, top dressed and overseeded.Drag, or use arrow keys

The garden year

What we are doing, and when

This is the actual calendar our crews work to — published, because the timing is the whole job. Whichever season you are reading this in is the one showing.

The most useful eight weeks of the year. What you do now decides how the lawn looks next June.

6 scheduled jobs · September – November

  1. 01Core aerate and overseedFirst two weeks of September
  2. 02Compost top dress, 1/4 inchStraight after seeding
  3. 03Autumn potassium feedEarly October
  4. 04Leaf clearance, visit one of threeLate October
  5. 05Lower blade to 2.5 inches for final cutsEarly November
  6. 06Plant bulbs, bare-root hedging and shrubsThrough November

How we work

Four things we will not budge on

01

One crew, your garden

You get the same two or three people every visit and their crew lead’s cell number. Nobody has to be told twice where the water shut-off is.

02

No glyphosate, no blanket spray

Weeds come out by hand or by hoe. Where a treatment is genuinely the only option we tell you what it is, why, and what it costs to avoid it.

03

A written record per garden

Every plant we prune, feed or move goes in your garden’s record. It travels with the property if you sell.

04

A price that holds

Quotes are fixed for the season. If a job turns out smaller than we measured, the invoice gets smaller too.

Clients

4.87 out of 5

213 verified reviews

They inherited a garden my late father had planted over thirty years and treated it like it mattered. Aurelio brought me a hand-drawn plan of where everything was before he touched a single shrub.
Marguerite OkonkwoLaurelhurst · client since 2017
Our lawn was moss with ambitions. One aeration, an overseed and a written watering schedule later, it is the best on the block and I water half as much as I used to.
Dev RaghunathanMultnomah Village · client since 2022
Three visits during leaf fall instead of one, which sounded like an upsell until the first November went by without me on a ladder.
Fenella BroadbentSellwood-Moreland · client since 2019
They told me the laurel hedge could be saved and staged the work over two winters so it never looked butchered. A cheaper quote would have ripped it out.
Teodoro Salgado-VanceAlberta Arts · client since 2020

Tell us the address.
We will tell you the day.

Quotes are written, fixed for the season, and free. If your street already sits on one of our rounds, we can usually start within a fortnight.