Narberth, in close quarters.

Narberth is a small independent borough, surrounded on every side by Lower Merion Township and sharing zip 19072 with Penn Valley. It was built to be walked: a train station, a short run of storefronts along Haverford Avenue, and streets of Victorians, twins and early twentieth-century singles on small lots. Most landscaping in Narberth therefore happens within a few feet of a property line. Front yards are shallow, side yards are narrow, and the back yard is usually the only part of the property with room for a garden.

Small lots make the work fussy in predictable ways. Driveways are narrow and often shared, so access decides the method before anything else. Stone and soil often come in by wheelbarrow down a side yard because no machine fits. Grading is the other constraint. With a property line a few feet from the house, water taken off a new patio or walk has nowhere to go but a neighbor’s yard unless the pitch and the drainage are worked out first. Add mature street trees and close-set houses, and much of the ground sits in shade for most of the day.

Requests here run toward the front of the house and its edges: settled front walks and porch steps reset on a proper base, a small patio fitted into a back yard with no spare room, garden and retaining walls where the grade steps down to a neighbor. Beds around older houses are usually overgrown foundation plantings that want renovating rather than repeating. Lawns are small enough that mowing, edging and trimming go quickly, and shade means overseeding and aeration matter more than they would in an open yard.