Landscape Maintenance

Our landscape has become more and more sophisticated over the years and we need a landscape maintenance firm that can properly care for it. Can Exterior Worlds help us out?
A beautiful yard says something special about the homeowners and, after spending your hard-earned money on a landscape installation, it now makes sense to protect it and make sure it develops as designed. And that’s where an Exterior Worlds’ landscape maintenance program comes in.

The services listed below are part of any excellent landscape maintenance contract. But Exterior Worlds prides itself on providing extras, such as identifying unexpected diseases and providing an estimate for treatment, and treating all landscape elements—for example, your sculptures and statues, irrigation systems and landscape lighting—with particular respect. We are also mindful of hard surface maintenance: pathways, driveways, patios and outdoor kitchens. Water elements, such as swimming pools and outdoor water fountains, that may accumulate debris during trimming of shrubs or lawn are cleaned as well.

Please give us Exterior World’s philosophy of maintenance.
Landscape maintenance starts with your turf. Houston lawns typically need trimming weekly through the summer and bi-weekly in the winter. We also recommend that lawns be aerated twice a year, although with aeration the more often, the better.
Other key components of our maintenance program:

• Shrubs, Ground Cover and Vines. As part of our thorough landscaping maintenance program, hedges, shrubs and bushes are trimmed regularly to maintain the desired contours. Vines and ground cover are also edged to maintain a neat appearance. This regularly-scheduled maintenance ensures that all elements conform to the original plan of your landscape design.
• Flower Bed Maintenance. We weed flower beds weekly. We also turn the mulch every two weeks so as to keep the exchange of air and water flowing into and out of the soil. To optimize the growth and bloom cycles of seasonal flowers, we regularly prune and fertilize them.
• Tree Maintenance. All small trees are pruned as necessary. As a good practice of landscaping maintenance, we also schedule a deep root fertilization of these trees annually.

What about long-term care? An important step for your landscape’s long-term health is a pro-active fertilization and chemical treatment program. It provides a healthy boost to plants and is also a preventative for diseases and infestations common to our area.

We recommend that lawns be fertilized four times a year. All vines, ground covers and bushes should be on a similar schedule. Roses need to be fertilized in the spring, and then continued every four to six weeks during the growing season. Azaleas and gardenias need fertilization in April and May, and acidified in February.

For Houston lawns, one of the most common diseases is brown patch, or “Rhizoctonia solani.” The solution is a basic maintenance program involving a fungicide and herbicide treatment. For Houston roses, the major enemy is black spot disease, therefore roses need to be sprayed when black spot appears. Finally, we have found that all plants benefit from chemical treatments to protect against various insect infestations.