Landscaping in Cumberland, Maine — our home town.

Cumberland's housing is younger than most of Greater Portland: the median home dates to 1984, and more than a quarter were built in 2000 or later. That usually means builder-grade landscaping that is now twenty years old — foundation shrubs that have swallowed the windows, a lawn seeded on thin fill, and a front walk poured as an afterthought. Those are the properties where a real entry walkway, a regraded lawn and a replanted foundation bed change the whole house.

The other 15% of homes predate 1940, mostly in the older village areas and along the Foreside. Those lots bring fieldstone walls, mature trees with roots under everything and grades that were never engineered. There, the job is often a retaining wall that finally holds a slope, or granite steps that replace a path worn into the hill.

The 2023 USDA map puts Cumberland Center in zone 5b and the Foreside in 6a. That half-zone matters for plant choice in foundation beds, and it shows up in the lawn: inland yards green up later and take a harder freeze. UMaine Extension recommends a Kentucky bluegrass and fine fescue mix for most Maine lawns, with more fescue under shade or on dry, sandy spots, seeded between mid-August and mid-September.

Emerald ash borer is under state quarantine across all of Cumberland County, so any ash near the house or driveway deserves a look before it becomes a removal problem. Firewood and ash wood from a removal stay regulated inside the quarantine area.