Landscaping in Stouffville: sod, lawn and interlock work

Whitchurch-Stouffville borders Markham to the north, but it’s a different place to keep a yard. Urban Stouffville’s population roughly doubled between 2006 and 2011, so a lot of homes sit on subdivision lots from the same few years.

Past those streets, most of the town is countryside: farms, hamlets, kettle lakes, forest tracts and big rural lots. The Town also has its own by-laws, and they don’t always match the ones people know from Markham or Richmond Hill.

How does the Oak Ridges Moraine affect lawns in Stouffville?

On the sandy moraine soil that covers most of the town, water drains away fast, so lawns brown sooner in a dry July and new sod needs a real layer of topsoil under it. The Oak Ridges Moraine Foundation describes the moraine as a 160 km ridge of sand, silt and gravel where water “often seeps straight down” into its sandy core. That’s good for the aquifers and hard on grass.

The soil isn’t the same everywhere, though. The southern edge of the town west of Highway 48 sits below the moraine on a clay-loam till plain, so a yard in the south end of urban Stouffville can behave more like one in Markham. Dig down a spade’s depth before you plan a lawn or a bed.

On the sandier ground further north, a few things follow:

• New sod needs at least 10 cm of topsoil under it, or it struggles to root and dries out fast after a missed watering. Our guide on preparing your yard for sod covers the grading and soil work.
• Spreading topsoil for a lawn is routine garden work under the Town’s Fill By-law. Bigger grade changes need a fill permit from the Town’s Engineering department.
• Mow high. The Toronto and Region Conservation Authority suggests about 7.5 cm, which keeps the soil cooler and moister, and says clippings left on the lawn add nutrients, moisture and shade. Stouffville doesn’t collect grass clippings anyway, so leaving them is the easy choice. See lawn mowing and lawn care.
• Garden beds hold moisture better with compost worked into the sand and a layer of mulch on top. See garden beds, planting and mulching.
• Interlock can still sink where the base wasn’t compacted well, often by downspouts and along the garage. That’s an interlock repair job, not a full replacement. Here’s why interlock sinks and how it gets fixed.

How are Stouffville’s yard rules different from Markham’s?

Stouffville allows lower front-yard fences and taller backyard fences than Markham, starts its watering season two weeks earlier, and gives new sod half as long to be watered outside the rules. Here’s how the main ones compare, from each town’s own by-laws.

Scroll sideways to see the whole table.

Fences and hedges

Stouffville’s Fence and Pool Enclosure By-law limits residential fences to 1 m in the front yard and 2.2 m in side and rear yards. Its definition of a fence includes “any hedge or grouping of shrubs” used to enclose a yard or give privacy. So a front-yard cedar hedge that has grown to 2 m to screen the house can count, on paper, as an over-height fence.

Corner lots have a stricter rule. Within the sight triangle (the corner area bounded by the two street lines and a line joining points 5 m back from where they meet), no fence, hedge, shrub or tree can be taller than 1 m. Corner shrubs need hedge trimming to stay under that.

Building or replacing a fence around a pool needs a pool enclosure permit first. If you’re comparing with the city, our guide to fence height rules in Markham and Toronto has their numbers.

Watering

The Outdoor Water Use By-law covers homes on Town water in Stouffville, Ballantrae and Musselman’s Lake. From May 15 to September 30, even-numbered addresses water on even days and odd-numbered addresses on odd days, between 6 and 10 a.m. and 6 and 10 p.m.

New sod or seed can be watered outside those limits for up to a month after it goes down, and new trees and shrubs for 24 hours after planting. That month is shorter than Markham’s two. We’d book a sod installation for May or September, when cooler weather means new sod dries out more slowly. For a schedule, see how often to water new sod.

The same by-law exempts washing driveways and walkways right before a sealer or other preservative goes on, or before the paver joints are refilled. That covers the wash before interlock sealing or new polymeric sand.

Wider driveways

The Town’s zoning by-law (section 3.24.6.2) limits a residential driveway to the garage door width plus 2 m, or 6 m, whichever is greater, and 9 m with a three-bay garage.

It also requires a share of the front yard to stay soft landscaping (lawn or planting), usually at least 35%, or 20% on some lots narrower than 11 m. Plenty of people want to add a strip of interlock beside the driveway. Measure first, because that strip counts.

Trees

The Town’s private tree by-law mainly protects trees with a trunk 30 cm or more across (measured 1.3 m up), on land going through subdivision, site plan or severance approvals. It isn’t a general backyard permit system like Markham’s, where private trees 20 cm or more across need a permit.

Trees on Town land are different. Residents can’t prune, remove or injure them without the Town’s permission, and that includes boulevard trees. The Town also asks residents not to dig in their root zones, so if you’re redoing a walkway or driveway edge next to one, call the Town first.

Trees that are part of a woodlot or woodland may need a permit from York Region before removal.

Yard waste

The Town picks up yard waste every other week from April to November. Use paper yard waste bags or an open-top container marked with the yellow yard waste sticker, and don’t set bags out before collection day.

Branches have to be bundled, no larger than 2 feet high by 3 feet long, and nothing thicker than 3 inches. Grass clippings aren’t collected. Check your street’s dates on the collection calendar, and book a fall cleanup early enough that the last bags make the final November pickup.

Getting a landscaping quote in Stouffville

Call (437) 684-2535, text us a couple of photos with your street or postal code, or use the form below. We’ll come out, look at the job and give you a free quote.

For a sod or garden bed job, a photo of a spade’s depth of your soil is worth adding. On the sandy moraine ground in the north of town, how much topsoil goes down first is most of the job, and in the clay-loam south end it often isn’t. Closer to the city? See our pages for Markham and Richmond Hill.