Commercial Landscaping Blog for The San Jose | Bay Area, CA

Pedestrian Safety is a concerning subject these days with many bay area commercial property managers. They want to ensure that their apartment complexes, office landscaping and corporate headquarters are being maintained in a safe manor for tenants, visitors and the staff.

In all honesty, landscaping and trees must be maintained and managed for there safety and in some cases may create hazards in corporate landscaping when they are adjacent to parking areas, walk ways and building structures.

Commercial Landscape Management Improves Safety

Let’s review some of the common pit falls and how to manage them.

Tips For Your Commercial Landscape Maintenance Meeting

A job site walk through with your Commercial Landscape Company or assigned account manager is essential from time to time, this helps keep the lines of communication open assisting everyone to stay focused on your goals and desires.

Commercial Landscape Maintenance adds Color

With Bay Area drought conditions, many of today's  landscapes are being designed for beauty, energy efficiency and colorful in appearance. They are engineered to lower maintenance costs, conserve resources, and reduce the heat island effect on properties.

This time of the year is Prime Planting Season for Trees, Shrubs, and Flowers.They often establish more quickly when properly irrigated. The warmer weather allows the plants root system to acclimate more quickly pushing the flowers into bloom.

10 Valuable Tips to Keep in mind for the Drought

• Reduce the Landscape watering frequency for established plantings

• Deep water trees keeping them well hydrated

• Monitor Trees and Shrubs for drought stress

• Adjust Watering Frequency Per Drought Watering Restrictions

• Have trees inspected by an experienced arborist for dead or diseased or unsafe branches.

• Consider Long Term Planning for Converting Lawns to Drought Friendly Landscaping

• Replace Annual Color with Drought Resistant Flowers

• Mulch Trees and shrubs for water conservation

• Inspect Plant material for insect damage

• Install Smart Watering Systems

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, and with the current drought, how will your bay area landscaping picture look in 10 years?  Depending on how much lawn you have can greatly impact your picture, and here’s why.

On average a lawn requires a minimum of 30 Gallon of water per year, for each 12” square foot of landscaping in order to keep it green and thriving, and with current water restrictions you might be fortunate enough if you are getting half of that amount.

We all know that potable water is becoming a scarce commodity these days in the bay area, without much choice but to accept the "brown as your new green", but there’s hope. Let’s look at your options, and fortunately there are a few that can bring back your landscaping to the "real green" that everyone wants.

Now that we know that lawns consume at least double the amount of irrigation than water wise landscaping, costing more to maintain, require weekly maintenance, consume lots of water, fertilizer and pesticides. With that said, let’s consider a better choice that consists of replacing your lawn.

But how much does it cost to replace my lawn? Read on

Bay area landscaping companies can provide a number of benefits by using mulch, including reduced erosion and water loss, improved soil nutrition and a more balanced soil temperature. Different kinds of mulch provide these benefits at different levels. The river rocks and other small stones often used to prevent weed growth in landscapes are attractive, can help conserve water and require little maintenance, but they don't nourish or insulate the soil in the same ways as conventional organic mulch.

Bay Area Landscaping For Your Trees 

Arid weather and soil conditions can significantly impact the life span of your valuable landscape assets. Because trees are difficult and expensive to replace, your trees need to be regularly monitored during and after periods of dry and hot weather.

The plantings around your properties building perimeter can make a big difference in many ways. Having the right plants to tolerate the drought is part of the equation for great foundation plants but plant material that is interfering with window views, walk way and crowding out the others is another factor to consider. Planting the right combination of foliage and plants will ultimately impact your landscaping design one way or the other. The real challenge for most commercial and multi-residential properties is deciding on the right balance of plants that can tolerate the heat and fit into your design.

In the bay area where drought problems live, property owners must be vigilant if they want to keep their landscaping looking presentable throughout the year. Drought resistant landscaping is just one prudent option providing low maintenance landscaping without having to worry about the high cost of water and commercial lawn care.

Drought continues to plague the bay area with HOA community landscaping and landscaping for commercial properties and who knows what the cost of water will be in the next 10 years, but there is one thing for sure, the cost will not go down. With many municipalities and water agencies requiring strict water rationing in order to reduce the use of water, do you think these restrictions will force you to choose between brown, deteriorating landscaping and expensive water penalties?, think again because you haven’t looked at the newest landscaping trends available.

We’ve all seen the traditional lawns; that need excessive amounts of water, requiring a large amount of fertiliser and maintenance. Or the broken sprinkler heads that shoot the geyser of water high into the sky, watering everything but the lawn. Beautiful variations of contrasting colors of rock and fairly sparse plantings can evoke the effect of a healthy landscape that’s soft on the eyes. Planned and installed correctly, a property can have a beautiful and long-term landscape that can potentially reduce outside water costs by up to 50%.