Service Area

Landscaping in Scarborough, Maine.

Scarborough is the biggest town we serve by area and the newest by housing: 47 square miles of land, about 22,000 people, and a median home built in 1988 — only 8% of homes predate 1940. It stretches from Higgins Beach, Pine Point and Prouts Neck on the coast to Dunstan, Oak Hill and West Scarborough inland, with the Scarborough, Nonesuch, Libby and Spurwink rivers between them.

At its center is Scarborough Marsh, about 3,200 acres and the largest salt marsh in Maine. Everything that drains toward it — yards, driveways, lawns — is part of how the town manages water.

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Scarborough at a glance

Neighborhoods: Higgins Beach, Pine Point, Prouts Neck, Blue Point, Dunstan, Oak Hill, Eight Corners, West Scarborough
Housing: Median home built 1988; only ~8% built before 1940; ~77% owner-occupied
Scarborough Marsh: About 3,200 acres, Maine's largest salt marsh, a state wildlife management area
Stormwater: MS4 community with non-stormwater discharge and post-construction stormwater ordinances
Trees: Tree City USA with a Tree Care Advisory Board and a recommended-tree list
Hardiness zone: 6a (2023 USDA map)

Water rules around the marsh

Scarborough is covered by the federal small-town stormwater permit (MS4) and has both a non-stormwater discharge ordinance and a post-construction stormwater ordinance. The town lists Red Brook as urban-impaired, and Phillips Brook runs into the marsh northeast of Pine Point Road. Its Environmental Standards set setbacks for new development from salt marshes, freshwater wetlands, rivers, streams, vernal pools and coastal bluffs.

For a homeowner that means grading and drainage are part of every landscape job here: patios and walks pitched so water soaks in rather than sheeting to the street, disturbed soil stabilized quickly, and fertilizer kept to what a soil test calls for — UMaine Extension advises phosphorus-free fertilizer unless a test shows a deficiency.

Newer neighborhoods, first real landscapes

With so much housing built since the late 1980s, many Scarborough yards are still wearing their builder's landscaping: a strip of shrubs, a lawn seeded on thin topsoil, and a back yard that ends at a slope or tree line. That is the ideal starting point for a first patio, a planted bed that frames the house, or a lawn rebuilt properly with four to six inches of loam, the depth UMaine Extension recommends.

Scarborough is not on the state's list of towns with a pesticide ordinance, but the same low-input lawn care applies near the marsh and the rivers: a soil test, lime to correct acidic soil, and a bluegrass–fine fescue mix seeded between mid-August and mid-September.

Trees and winter

The town's Tree Care Advisory Board keeps a recommended-tree list for public planting, a good reference for anyone choosing street-side trees. All of Cumberland County sits inside the emerald ash borer quarantine, so ash trees on newer lots are worth watching. And with long residential streets and large commercial lots, reliable plowing matters for getting out in the morning.

What we do in Scarborough