Garden Services

A consistently implemented and carefully considered garden services plan is the best way to protect the beauty and vibrancy of your landscape. Keeping the landscape clean and healthy makes a powerful statement to surrounding residences. It says you care about your property, and you wish to have it emphasized from every vantage point along the street.

It makes no sense to invest in professional landscape design services to have vegetation carefully chosen and planted, only to neglect it after the fact. The Houston climate is brutal, to say the least, and most of the plants you will have in your new landscape come from other parts of the world where the heat and heavy rains are not so severe. It is necessary to protect these delicate investments with a garden services program that will help them weather both the hot dry months of summer and the temperamental winters where the weather vacillates between muggy wind and cold blasts of frigid arctic air.

Surprising to many, garden services actually begin with the lawn, not the garden.
The typical Houston lawn needs trimming weekly through the summer and bi-weekly in the winter months. It also requires yard aeration—something many people do not even consider. Lawn aeration keeps the clay-like Houston soil from clumping up around plant roots and blocking the absorption of water and vital nutrients. The lawn also needs to be fertilized four times per year.

Tree maintenance is another key element of a garden services plan.
Every small tree in your yard needs to be pruned as often as is necessary for that particular species. Your landscaper will also schedule annual deep root fertilization as part of your garden services program. Shrubs, ground cover, and vines will also be pruned and edged to maintain a neat, clean appearance. Hedges require aesthetic maintenance as well as vitality maintenance. They often have to be pruned to maintain special shapes and contours.

Flower beds need to be weeded weekly.
It is also wise to turn the mulch in the flower bed every two weeks to ensure that plenty of air and water are exchanging in and out of the soil.

A garden services plan includes professionally-administered fertilization and chemical treatments.
These treatments are not as simple as they appear at face value. Store-bought chemicals are not always safe to use with many of the plants we install in gardens. It is best to let the landscape designer apply proven treatment methods as needed to prevent diseases like brown patch and insect infestations.

Finally, your garden services plan must include freeze protection for your plants.
You would think that as hot as Houston is in the summer that our winters would be safe for plants. They are not. When northers blow into Texas, they can plummet temperatures and quickly frost plants that have just been rained on the previous day. This is a killer to many species, particularly tropicals. Plastic is not a good covering for these plants because it blocks light and water and will suffocate plants if left on them for many days. Instead, let your landscaping company come out and as a part of your maintenance contract protect your investment with a special freeze cloth which will allow light, oxygen, and water to pass through.