Reducing Your Commercial Landscape Maintenance Costs
There are a number of ways to reduce the amount of time spent maintaining a landscape. There are also ways to reduce landscape maintenance expenses. However, sometimes it requires some upfront investment of time and/or money to renovate a landscape in order to reduce the amount of maintenance. Below are a few ideas and suggestions.
Lawn is the highest maintenance part of hoa landscaping services because it requires weekly mowing most of the year plus fertilization, weed control, and water. In order to keep lawns green during July and August, they also must be irrigated regularly.
Raising mowing height to 1 ½ to 2 inches will reduce maintenance costs by reducing weed invasion and pest problems. Lawn cycling known as mulching the clippings is the equivalent of one fertilization per year. Mulching can also helps save and reduce labor and disposal costs.
Granular weed and feed and liquid lawn weed killers are very effective on broad leaf weeds, but do not control grassy weeds. Synthetic turf is a good choice in some applications as well; this will also reduce maintenance costs associated with watering, fertilizing and weekly mowing.
Ground Covers can be planted in areas where it is difficult to grow grass (shady areas, slopes, unusual shape areas. Ground covers can completely replace lawns with low growing plants which do not require mowing. There are some ground covers which will take some foot traffic; however, none will take the amount of wear given by active foot traffic. Ground covers are more expensive to establish than lawns. In some cases removing small patches or sparse areas of ground cover adjacent to narrow strip planters can reduce the time of routine edging, shearing and clearing in and around other plant material.
Trees and Shrubs - Creating beds around trees and shrubs not only reduces grass trimming costs, but reduces mower trimmer damage and your commercial landscaping services cost. Two inches of bark mulch will reduce weeds by 90% or more. Weed barrier fabric (porous woven fabric) is almost 100% effective until weed seeds blow in on of the bark or other mulch placed on the fabric. Weed barrier fabric can be applied to already existing plantings as well as new ones.
Weed herbicides such as glyphosate (Roundup and other brands) can be used to kill existing weeds under and around trees and shrubs as long as you keep them off leaves of desirable plants. Pre-emergent is a granular weed preventer which can be used around plants and ground covers. It lasts for about 3-6 months. Corn gluten is a natural weed preventer which reduces about 80% of weeds
Pruning and Hedge trimming - Pruning for example in a complex can reduce condominium landscaping services and costs, landscaping is the second most time consuming task in maintenance with lawn being on top of the list. Trimming can be reduced by replacing overgrown shrubs and trees with dwarf varieties which fit the allocated space. Sometimes removing crowded plants will leave enough room for natural growth of adjoining plants. Shrubs and trees can seldom be reduced by more than 1/3 of their normal height. And even this requires yearly pruning by a skilled pruner. Never “top” or stub off large branches of trees and shrubs.
Annual Flowers Beds Flowers require the most intense maintenance because of the repeated pinching, removing dead flowers, pesticide application, hand watering pots and regular fertilization. Replacing annual flowers with perennials will not only reduce the maintenance labor costs but will also reduce the installation cost of planting annual beds 3-5 times per year. Since perennial flowers not needing to be planted regularly, adding mulch will significantly lessen the weed maintenance. Effective mulches include ground fir bark, organic compost and organic green waste.
Simple designs with one or two kinds of annual or perennial flowers are easier to maintain.
Need help Designing your Landscape?
Leave It up to one of Our Certified Rock Stars!
Corporate Landscaping Services for Commercial Properties
FloraTerra provides commercial landscaping services in and around the Santa Clara Valley & Bay Area, we design, install and maintain landscaping for shopping malls, Multi-Tennant-Office Buildings, and Commercial Offices. We provide a complete range of landscaping and water management services. Some of our landscaping services include drought resistant landscaping and design with low flow watering systems. We serve a variety of markets including: Landscaping for Residential Estates, Commercial Property Managers, Retail Shopping Centers & Malls, Industrial R&D, Home Owners Association Landscaping, Public & Municipal Properties and Large scale corporate campus type properties.
Get Our FREE Landscape Assessment by clicking the link below
San Jose | Santa Clara | Milpitas | Palo Alto | Sunnyvale | Redwood Shores | Union City | Fremont
