The best way to control ticks around your home is to make your landscape inhospitable to them through habitat modification. Ticks are most commonly found in wooded or overgrown places where there is abundant leaf litter, thick weeds, or high grass. These are the areas where ticks find protection from the drying effects of the sun and wind, and also where their animal hosts (such as mice and deer) live. While ticks may sometimes be found on well-mowed lawns, where they may have dropped off of a host animal, they are most likely to be found and controlled at the wooded or landscaped edge of the lawn area.
The best way to control ticks is to remove high grass, weeds, leaf litter, and woody undergrowth from around your home. Pesticides that kill ticks can be applied to your yard as a last resort if large numbers of ticks are present.