'This one is awful'

Tom and Brooke Iarossi want a nice backyard, the kind of place where they can entertain and their daughter can play.

What they have is a mess. The yard is filled with waste from their dogs. The grass is patchy, and there is a scary tin shed that needs to disappear.

"This yard badly needs help," Brooke Iarossi said Sunday. "We've been here almost five years, and we've neglected our backyard that long."

Help is coming. The Iarossis were chosen Sunday from the roughly 300 people who showed up at Lowe's on South Dale Mabry Highway in hope of being featured on an episode of DIY Network's "Yard Crashers."

In essence, they came to audition for a backyard makeover paid for by the show. They brought sketched plans, photos and videos of their yards.

The Iarossis got to the store at 8 a.m. with a video. They learned they won about 6 p.m.

Sunday evening, a crew from the show arrived at the couple's home on Ballast Point Boulevard. Show host Ahmed Hassan chatted with them to get an idea of what they wanted, such as a swing for Isabella, their 9-month-old girl.

The two-day landscaping blitz begins Wednesday and more than $35,000 will be spent on the improvements. The program will be broadcast in July.

Producers hunted all day for the right yard - one that offered a blank slate and striking before and after images.

The show seeks personable, energetic people with terrible yards and tries to help.

"We need yards that are awful," said Ross Babbit, director of programming for DIY Network. "And this one is awful."

This is the first time the program has been in Tampa, which was picked because it's warm in March and DIY and "Yard Crashers" have a solid fan base here.

Sunday's event at Lowe's represented a change for the program, Babbit said. Previously, Hassan lurked in home improvement stores, waiting to ambush a shopper and convince the homeowner to take him home for two days of work transforming a sorry yard into a showpiece.

The transformation budgets usually start about $20,000, he said. The show pays for whatever might be needed, from landscaping to patios or fencing.

Brooke Iarossi, 29, has high hopes for her new yard. It's finally going to look good, she said.

"This is so exciting," Iarossi said. "I got teary-eyed when we heard we'd won. We've wanted to work on our yard for so long."

Hassan said he looks forward to getting to work: "This yard is right in line with what I'm used to ripping out and totally redoing. There's really not much that's salvageable here."