How To Maintain Your Landscape: Ultimate Guide
Neuroscientists believe that attentional biases and fixation affect consumer decision-making. This means the longer a person looks at something, the more likely they will choose it.
This explains why kerb appeal is crucial for driving foot traffic into a business establishment. And what better way for those in the hospitality and F&B sectors to attract attention and make a great first impression than with well-maintained landscapes?
Meticulous landscape maintenance can set the tone for the exceptional experiences you offer. This guide gives you practical insights and expert advice on essential maintenance steps, ensuring your landscape remains in top shape year-round.
Understanding Landscape Maintenance
Landscape maintenance focuses on keeping a landscaped space healthy, safe, clean, and attractive. Sometimes called “groundskeeping,” this process entails several core activities:
- Lawn care
- Pruning and trimming of plants and trees
- Irrigation system management
- Seasonal planting and cleanup
Landscape installation and maintenance provide countless benefits beyond aesthetics. It can also enhance your property value and lead to cost savings. If you want to learn more, our previous blog discussed the importance of landscape maintenance in greater detail.
Key Advantages of Professional Landscape Maintenance
If proper landscape upkeep already offers perks that can benefit businesses, can you imagine what one performed by a specialist can do for you?
This section tackles several reasons you should opt for professional landscape maintenance services for your commercial space.
1. Convenience and Time Efficiency
Among the primary reasons business owners call on professionals to handle landscaping maintenance are convenience and time efficiency.
As a business owner, you should focus on running your business smoothly and keeping your customers happy. While you can hire a dedicated gardener, doing so may lead to higher labour costs and take more time than you can spare. Plus, all the equipment and tools needed for the upkeep of your greenspace will still be at your expense.
2. Cost Savings
Do you want to know how to reduce maintenance landscape costs? Hire professionals.
With their expert knowledge, they can provide solutions that last a long time. That means your landscape won’t need frequent replacements and repairs, enabling you to save on costs in the long run.
As they have the necessary expertise and experience, these specialists can ensure the job is done right on the first try. That means no costly trial-and-error and no wasted money, making it a good long-term investment.
3. Safety
Asking professionals to maintain your commercial landscape also ensures the safety of your customers and employees.
Take tree trimming, for example. This task requires using tools like loppers, chainsaws, and wood chippers, which require specific skills to be used efficiently. It also calls for more safety equipment like climbing gear and rigging rope to help avoid accidents.
As a bonus, landscape maintenance experts can also identify sick trees and help nurse them back to health or replace them with young, healthy saplings.
Step-by-Step Guide to Professional Landscape Maintenance
Whether done by a newbie or a pro, landscaping maintenance has four core aspects:
1. Assessment and Planning
Before taking any action, landscape contractors in Dubai evaluate the state of your landscape via a complete walkthrough of the space. At this stage, they not only assess the current health of the plants but also determine their interrelationship with other landscape elements and their impact on one another.
After that, these trained specialists diagnose any issues and prepare a comprehensive action plan according to their findings and your specific needs and preferences for your landscape.
2. Lawn Care
Lawns are considered a fundamental element in landscape design. They can bring together trees and other plants into one harmonious whole.
Proper lawn care is required in landscapes with grass as ground cover. This entails regular watering, mowing and aeration.
Mowing
Mowing means cutting grass to an ideal height, which should be no lower than a third of the plant’s height. This benefits the landscape by decreasing the load on the root system and ensuring the efficient distribution of water and nutrients from aboveground.
When mowed regularly (during the growing season), lawns become thicker and more resistant to disease and weeds.
Landscape experts also recommend varying the mowing pattern and sharpening the mower blades a few times annually for a healthy, clean cut.
Aeration
Soil becomes compacted over time because of mowing and foot traffic. When this happens, oxygen cannot reach the roots to turn organic matter into nutrients.
To remedy this, landscape maintenance specialists puncture the soil – a process called aeration. The shallow holes created through this process serve as channels for air, water, and nutrients from organic matter to spread to the ground.
3. Plant and Tree Care
Plants and trees are essential to green landscapes, especially in urban areas like Dubai. To ensure they are in excellent shape and health, your landscape maintenance partners must perform the following steps:
Pruning and Trimming
Like lawn grass, trees, shrubs, and other plants must be trimmed or pruned to prevent them from looking unruly and ensure safety in the landscaped space. This task needs to be performed at the right time and at the appropriate spot to avoid damaging the plants.
Mulching
Mulch helps suppress weed growth and maintain moisture within the soil. It also works as an insulator for the roots, ensuring healthy grass growth.
4. Irrigation Management
An irrigation management system acts as a central control system, ensuring that plants within a landscape are watered at the correct rate, volume, and timing.
Your landscape partners will perform periodic inspections to ensure your irrigation system is in good shape. Whichever irrigation system you have, you must ensure it is checked at least two times per season or once at the beginning of each month.
During inspection, landscape maintenance experts will also troubleshoot the irrigation system’s inefficiencies and vulnerabilities. Among the tell-tale signs of irrigation system issues are:
- Leaks
- Missing, tilted, broken, or sunken sprinkler heads
- Blocked nozzles
- Too low water pressure
- Wrong spray patterns
- Water run-off
- Pooled water
- Constantly wet ground
- Unhealthy plants
- Brown patches of grass
If you spot any of these, contact your landscape maintenance service provider immediately.
Get Superior Results
Landscape maintenance requires skill, experience, and the right tools and equipment to perform well. Entrust your commercial landscape with experts to save time, reduce costs, and guarantee thorough care.
Talk to a professional service provider like Planters for tailored landscape maintenance solutions to get superior results.
