Landscaping in Somerset, MA

Somerset sits on the Taunton River where it opens into Mount Hope Bay, a comfortable suburban town with real waterfront and a settled residential character.

The work here divides between waterfront properties with salt exposure and conventional suburban lots inland.

The waterfront along the Taunton River and Mount Hope Bay brings salt exposure and wind. The reliable plants are the coastal performers — bayberry, rugosa rose, inkberry, juniper and the ornamental grasses — and broadleaf evergreens on exposed lots get scorched by winter wind carrying salt.

Inland, Somerset is straightforward suburban ground: postwar and mid-century neighbourhoods with compacted soil, thin topsoil, and foundation plantings well past their intended size. Aeration and compost for the lawn, removal and replant at scale for the beds.

Wetlands buffer regulation applies along the river frontage, so grading, drainage outlets and new hardscape near the water get checked before they get quoted.

The soil is acidic like the rest of the region, and a soil test plus lime does more in the first season than another fertilizer application would.

Route 6 and Route 138 carry heavy traffic and heavy winter salting, and the frontages show it each spring in dead turf edges and browned road-facing evergreens.

Somerset's older neighbourhoods have mature street trees that are a genuine asset and a genuine constraint at the same time. Under an established canopy, turf is fighting shade and root competition together, and the honest recommendation on a lot of these properties is a shade planting rather than another year of reseeding thin grass.

A number of Somerset properties sit low enough that the water table is genuinely close to the surface in spring, which shows up as beds that stay saturated long after the lawn has drained. Raised beds and plant selection for wet feet solve that far more reliably than trying to drain ground that simply sits low.