Fall cleanup in Oshawa and Durham Region.

You do not need a membership for a fall cleanup, which is the part most people do not expect, so it is worth saying twice. Call once a year, get the leaves gone, pay the invoice, and that is a perfectly good way to be a customer.

Northline Property Care is an owner operated residential business working out of Oshawa, covering Whitby, Ajax, Pickering, Bowmanville, Courtice and Clarington. Fully insured and HST registered. The person who quotes your property is the person who does the work, which is why the number does not move.

What a fall cleanup actually includes

If you have been searching for a leaf raking service near you, this is that job, done with a blower and a truck rather than a rake. A cleanup is a list of jobs, not a feeling, so here is the list.

Every leaf off the lawn and out of the beds. Beds are where leaves get left by anybody working fast, and where they do the most harm, because nothing under a bed gets any air until April.

In Oshawa the City collects leaves and yard waste free at the curb every other week from mid April until early December, in paper bags or clearly marked open top containers weighing less than 20 kilograms, and never in plastic bags. Those are the City of Oshawa yard waste rules, and the Region of Durham stopped accepting leaf and yard waste at its waste management facilities, so whatever does not fit the collection day has no free route off the property. If your leaves fit that set out, use it, because nobody can beat free. The rules differ in every town around us, and they are set out in full in leaf collection in Oshawa, along with what belongs on the lawn instead of in a bag.

Drains, downspouts and window wells cleared at ground level, as part of the job rather than as an extra. A window well packed with wet maple in November is a damp basement wall in March. To be precise, this is not gutter cleaning: we do not go up on a roof and we do not clean eavestroughs.

Perennials cut back and the beds left tidy, so the spring job starts from zero.

A final cut, slightly shorter than usual. We cut at 7.5 cm, which is 3 inches, all season, and the last cut of the year comes down a little from that. Long grass under a snow pack lies over and stays wet for months.

How much shorter, and why the province and the American extension services disagree about it, is written out in the guide to when to stop cutting grass in Oshawa.

Everything bagged or hauled away. No pile left behind the garage.

And one thing we say before we start rather than after. A property with late dropping trees is often a two visit job, because oaks hold their leaves into November. If yours is one of those, you will know at the quote, with the number for both visits.

What it costs in Oshawa and Durham Region

A one off fall cleanup is $200 to $475 plus HST. A spring cleanup, for comparison, is $180 to $425 plus HST.

The April number is the smaller of the two and what decides it happens now rather than then. Our guide to spring cleanup in Durham Region sets out the seven month chain, the soil test that says whether the lawn can be walked on yet, and which of the five towns will take your bags away.

Two things move it: lot size and tree cover. Two identical bungalows on one street can be a $200 job and a $400 job if one has three mature maples over the back lawn and the other has a fence line of nothing.

The price is fixed at your address before anything starts. Not a starting point, not an estimate that firms up once we see it, and not an hourly meter running while somebody chats. If the job turns out bigger than it looked, that is our problem, because we are the ones who looked at it.

Most operators in Durham publish no cleanup price at all and answer with a form. Where a number does get published, yard cleanup here tends to start in the low three hundreds. We publish a range because that is the honest answer before anybody has seen the property.

When to book, and why late October is the wrong time to start looking

Fall cleanup has a six week window in Durham and it closes hard.

The drop starts in the first half of October, runs through the maples, and finishes with the oaks in the first week or two of November. After that the ground is frozen, the leaves are under snow, and the job you wanted has become a spring cleanup with four months of damage under it.

That is true of every truck in this region, not only ours. By the third week of October the operators who do this work are booked, and everybody phoning on November 1 is phoning the same short list. It also collides with the start of snow season, and our snow route closes when it is full.

So if you are reading this in September or early October, you are early, which is the correct place to be. Members do not have to think about it: leaf clearing runs as two passes, mid October and early November.

Leaves on a lawn over winter: what actually happens

This is the part people do not believe until the following April.

A light drop is not a problem: up to roughly a two centimetre covering can simply be mown over. A heavy drop is a different substance. Maple and oak in quantity get rained on, pack down, and turn into something with the texture of wet cardboard. That layer blocks the light, holds moisture against the crown of the plant, and stops air moving through the turf. Under a snow pack that is what snow mould wants, and snow mould is the grey matted patch you find on the first warm weekend of the year.

The leaf mat is one of three things that decide it, and the other two are the height of the last cut and where the winter snow is piled. All three are worked through on our page about snow mould in Oshawa.

The rule of thumb is two weeks. Leaves lying on grass for longer than that are already doing harm, and a thick maple layer left that long in wet weather will kill what is under it. Waiting for the very last leaf is the most expensive decision available: you are not saving a visit, you are trading a tidy job in October for a dead patch and a reseed bill in April. What is left in April, after a layer has sat on it all winter, is usually thin soil and moss rather than grass, and that is the case a full lawn restoration exists to answer.

Most Durham towns run some form of curbside yard waste collection through the fall. Check your own municipality's page for the dates and the bag rules, because they are not the same from town to town.

The towns and neighbourhoods we cover

We book by geography, street by street. The tighter our customers sit on a street, the less of the day goes through the windscreen, which is how the price stays fixed.

Oshawa and Whitby

Windfields, Kedron, Samac and the newer streets off Taunton have open lots and young trees, so one pass usually does it. McLaughlin, O'Neill, Donevan, Eastdale and Lakeview are the opposite: mature maples, established beds, tight access down the side of the house, and a six week drop. In Whitby, Pringle Creek, Lynde Creek, Williamsburg and Port Whitby are heavily treed, while Brooklin and Rolling Acres have bigger yards behind them than the frontage suggests.

Ajax, Pickering, Bowmanville and Courtice

Pickering Village is the mature end of Ajax and behaves like old Oshawa, while Westney Heights, Applecroft, Clover Ridge and Audley are faster work. Amberlea, Rosebank, Dunbarton and Brock Ridge take in a lot of ravine lots, and a ravine lot collects whatever the wind brings as well as what it grows. In Bowmanville the King and Liberty core and Waverley Road are the long drop, while Liberty North and Port Darlington are usually one pass. Courtice runs Prestonvale, Courtice Road, Townline, Hancock and Pebblestone, all fifteen minutes from the truck. We cover the rest of Clarington too, so if you are not sure about your street, phone and ask.

One off, or included in a membership

Book it as a one off. No membership, no commitment, no card on file for the rest of your life. $200 to $475 plus HST, and that is the whole arrangement.

Or have it included. A fall cleanup is included every year in all three Northline memberships, which are $129, $189 and $279 a month plus HST, billed in twelve equal payments on the last day of the month. On a membership nobody has to remember to book anything in October, and leaf clearing runs as two passes rather than one.

The honest comparison: if a cleanup is the only thing you will ever call us for, buy the cleanup. If you are also paying somebody to cut the grass every week, look at what one payment covers against three separate invoices. Snow is answered on the snow pages rather than this one, and the short version is that driveway plowing is on Gold and Platinum and the entry membership does not plow the driveway.

Common questions about fall cleanup in Durham Region

Do I need a membership to book a fall cleanup?

No. A one off fall cleanup can be booked by anyone in our service area, with no membership and no commitment. We quote your address, you approve the price, we do the work, we invoice you once. It is also included every year in all three memberships, but that is an option and not a requirement.

What does a fall cleanup cost in Oshawa and Durham Region?

A one off fall cleanup is $200 to $475 plus HST and a spring cleanup is $180 to $425 plus HST. The two things that move the number are lot size and tree cover. The price is quoted at your address and fixed before any work starts, so it does not change on the day.

What is actually included in a fall cleanup?

Every leaf off the lawn and out of the beds, drains, downspouts and window wells cleared at ground level, perennials cut back, a final cut slightly shorter than our usual 7.5 cm, and everything bagged or hauled away. It does not include gutter cleaning, because we do not work above ground level. A late dropping property is often a two visit job and we say so before we start.

When should I book a fall cleanup in Durham Region?

The window runs from the first half of October to the first week or two of November, which is about six weeks. By the third week of October most trucks in this region are booked, so early October is the time to call. Members do not book it at all: leaf clearing runs as two passes, mid October and early November.

Do you do one visit or two?

It depends on the trees. An open lot with young trees is usually one pass. A property with mature maples and oaks drops leaves over six weeks, so one pass in October means paying for a cleanup and then watching a second lawn's worth land on it. We tell you which yours is at the quote, not afterwards.

Book a fall cleanup in Oshawa, Whitby, Ajax, Pickering, Bowmanville or Courtice

You are calling the owner. No dispatcher, no call centre, and no crew you have never met arriving in an unmarked van.

Call or text 905-244-5779, or email andrew@northlinepropertycare.ca with your address and roughly how many mature trees sit over the lawn. You get a fixed price back the same day, and you will know before you commit whether yours is a one visit property or a two. Office hours are Monday to Friday 7 AM to 7 PM and Saturday 7 AM to 5 PM, closed Sunday.

Green in summer. Clear in winter.

Where to go next

• Every add on and one off service we price in the open
• The fall cleanup checklist, if you would rather do it yourself
• Weekly lawn care in Oshawa and Durham Region
• All three memberships, and what each one includes every year
• The towns and neighbourhoods we run in
• Get a fixed price for your address