Chuck Tetrault started C Tetrault Landscaping in 2020 and Brookline is about as close to home as our work gets. It's also one of the trickier towns to keep a lawn alive in. Brookline lots are small, the houses are old, and the tree canopy is beautiful and merciless. Between the mature maples and oaks along the side streets and the tight setbacks near Coolidge Corner and Washington Square, a lot of Brookline front lawns get four hours of direct sun on a good day. Add decades of foot traffic, dogs, and soil that's been compacted since the Victorians went up, and you get the classic Brookline lawn: thin, mossy in the shade, worn to dirt along the walkway, and green only in the one strip that catches the afternoon light. The irrigation systems have their own Brookline problem, which is age. A lot of them went in twenty or thirty years ago, they've been patched by three different companies, and half the heads are buried under grade or pointed at the fence.