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Expert Q & A

Even if you are not currently selling your home, it is a well known fact that any landscaping activity can immediately boost the overall value of your property. When you do choose to sell your home, a beautiful landscape can add thousands of dollars to the price. Think of your yard as your home. would you avoid cleaning the kitchen until you were ready to sell your home? A beautiful landscape around can make living there more enjoyable and promote a positive image to your friends and neighbors.

In general, any additions or improvements made to a home’s exterior grounds are considered to be landscaping projects. Most people think of landscaping as any changes made to a lawn or garden surrounding a home. Regardless of the size and shape of an outdoor area, every home owner has a landscape to work with. Landscaping is the art of taking this space and transforming it into a complimentary work of art.

While we would certainly love for you to try our services, some projects can be completed at home in only a few short hours. Deciding whether or not to hire a professional generally comes down to personal taste and the size of the project. You can save a great deal of money on very small projects, however, by consulting with a professional for 30 minutes or an hour. If you feel like you do not have enough time, patience or creativity to handle your landscaping, a professional might be the right choice. However, if you look forward to starting a new lawn project, you might decide to handle many of the tasks yourself.

From a landscapers perspective, color theory is very important. This concept involves mixing and matching colors to create a complimentary piece of art with your yard. Simply put, colors such as red and yellow are warm colors while blues and greens are cool ones. To create the best color scheme in your lawn, try matching warm colors with other warm colors and cool colors in the same way. Warm colors can be exciting while cool colors are often considered to be calming. So, if you are considering designing a garden for meditation, you will likely prefer to stick to cool colors in your fixtures and flowers.

The best time to water is around 3:00 am to 4:00 am. This time is optimum because watering before sunrise helps decrease the possibility for disease, wind is lighter, potential for evaporation is lower, and water pressure is higher.

The length of time spent watering varies depending on several factors such as: soil type, season, and weather conditions. An ideal schedule to get started in cooler weather would be once per week for about 20 minutes. Twice per week for 20 minutes should be sufficient in summer weather. During this time, you should make monitoring soil a habit to avoid the possibility of under or over-watering.

Assuming you’re asking for all key components, hardscape, fencing, drainage, lighting, plant material, etc., a realistic range is 5%-15% of your home’s value. Project costing however is very dynamic so your project price me be higher or lower based on site conditions, access, plant selection, scope of work, materials etc.

It is generally agreed that fall and spring are the best seasons to plant. These allow for the best opportunities for maximum growth for newly planted seeds and bulbs. Summer and winter months are not ideal for landscape installation, but lawns still need regular watering during these months to ensure proper growth.

  • Mulch provides the following benefits for planting when done correctly: For shrubs and ornamental trees, a mulch base of 2″-3″ is recommended. It helps to keep weeds in check, retains moisture in the soil and adds organic matter to the soil as it decays. Woody, ornamental and evergreen trees do not need or want their soil cultivated around their roots.

I prefer to recycle the clippings back to the turf as mulched grass blades (along with fall leaves) because they are 80% water and nutrients.  These mulchings are the very best compost for building long-term highly organic soil. I only catch when an area is too small or may get too many clippings in gardens. If I choose not to catch your grass clippings, be assured that even if I have to do a double cut based on a 7-day mowing cycle, there will be no extra charge to you, and you will always have a high quality appearance.

Brown spots can be caused by a variety of different things; here are a few possible reasons.  Fungus, lawn is too dry, lawn is stressed, and chemical burn, are a few possible reasons.  Call our office and have a professional come out and diagnose the lawn and help you fix the problem.

Contact us with your own questions, we would love to hear from you.