Residential Landscape Maintenance

Professional residential landscape maintenance ensures that your yard will look green and colorful regardless of the time of year. It will also keep your yard free of the many negative forces that will destroy plant life and damage the aesthetic of the property. Maintenance contracts lock labor rates into an affordable, predictable budget and ensure timely and consistent services on a regular basis.

Flower beds make a yard look like springtime regardless of the time of year.
Annual color maintenance is the rotation of different flowering species so that no matter what time of year it is, your flower bed will look lively and colorful. This is best done by trained experts who know what types of plants will flower at specific times of the year, and what types of flowers will grow better in the shade versus the sunlight.

Lawns are greener and neater when cared for under a residential landscape maintenance contract.
Mowing and edging the grass are the two fundamental basics of your lawn care program. During the warmer months, you should have this should be done on a weekly basis. Beginning in October and February, you should have it done bi-weekly. While onsite, we will also check your lawn for a number of diseases that plague grasses and treat them accordingly if discovered.

Professional aeration of soil is an extremely important aspect of residential landscape maintenance.
Houston soil is much like clay in its thickness and constituency. Over time, it gets pressed and compacted, which creates a barrier to root growth. Aeration removes cores of soil from the lawn that are approximately one-half inch to three-quarter inches in diameter. This both softens the soil and lets in much needed air and water, which roots need just like we do for optimal growth and health.

A residential landscape maintenance contract will take care of your irrigation and drainage systems.
Irrigation and drainage systems are usually custom built in a yard. Any repairs to these systems or cleaning that needs to be done is best performed by the professionals who installed them.

Residential landscape maintenance keeps all of your vegetation fertilized the way it needs to be, when it needs to be.
Grasses, gardens, and flowers need to be fertilized periodically in order to remain healthy and vibrant. Lawns, ground cover, vines, and shrubbery must be fertilized once every three months. Certain types of flowers, such as gardenias an azaleas, need fertilizing in April and May. Roses must be fertilized every four weeks beginning in the spring and continuing throughout the growing season.

A residential maintenance contract includes systematic and safe pest and disease control.
It is essential that you protect all vegetation against insects, fungi, and plant diseases. Each species of plant, grass, shrub, tree, and vine has its own specific vulnerabilities that must be addressed on an individual basis. What works for roses will not work for shrubs and grass. An advanced knowledge of botany is required to counteract the many different threats to plant life, and to systematically treat each species proactively without putting adjacent species at risk of the wrong chemicals or treatment methods.

One of the greatest threats to your lawn is a fungal disease called “brown patch.” To counteract it, we will perform routine fungicide treatment. Roses will be treated for black spot disease, and virtually everything in your yard, at one time or another needs a good spraying of the right kind of insecticide.

Tree preservation is one of the more unique benefits our plans offer.
We would all like to think that trees will take care of themselves because they do such a good job of it in Nature. This is an exaggerated perspective. In the forest, we do not notice how many trees actually suffer from disease and injury. In our yards, however, we can spot a dying or damaged tree almost instantly.

Lawn Care Services

In 1987, Exterior Worlds began offering expert lawn care service in Houston. We have since grown to become one of the Gulf Coast region’s premiere high-end landscape design and services firms. We believe that all lawn care service is not created equal. Our lawn care services not only include the list of expected duties, but also many extra chores you might not have considered. The Exterior Worlds’ version of lawn care service also includes an overall intention to provide top-tier care and attention to your landscape design and each element in it.

The typical clients of Exterior Worlds are homeowners who appreciate the return on investment principle as relates to landscaping. They understand the relationship between a beautiful, well-designed, well-maintained residential landscape and property value. They also find worth in the skills and expertise of professional landscapers because they see the financial rewards this proficiency provides to their personal bottom line.

And they also thoroughly enjoy gorgeous, green spaces and luxurious outdoor living.

A lawn maintenance contract with Exterior Worlds includes items such as:
• Regular mowing and trimming. We recommend mowing and trimming weekly during the warm and hot months and going to every other week during the cooler months.
• Chemical treatments. Feeding, fertilization and chemical treatments are other important practices in lawn care service as they provide a boost to vigorous plants and prevent infestations and diseases common to the Houston area.
• Inspection of your drainage system. Your residential landscape maintenance is impacted by the drainage system. By draining water from low-lying areas, it prevents standing water that can cause mosquito breeding grounds, slippery surfaces and soaked landscaping. Proper yard drainage is essential for the care of your turf as it transports water off your property in a timely manner, thus promoting healthy grass and allowing the maintenance crew to perform its regular lawn service duties.
• Inspection of your irrigation system. A fully functioning irrigation system requires ongoing maintenance. Since the system is both mechanical and electronic, it requires regular check-ups, such as the replacement of stuck valves and broken heads. We also monitor the best times and days to water, which change depending on the season and the weather. For this area, we usually recommend to start watering a couple of hours before sunrise, which puts water on the plants and ground just in time for the sun to come up and start generating heat. Any earlier and the water just sits there, giving fungus the opportunity to grow. Any later and you lose a lot of water to evaporation.
• Lawn aeration. This practice is integral to proper lawn care and provides benefits, such as increasing the activity of microorganisms that promote de-thatching, improving water infiltration which helps with drainage and reduces harmful fungi, and increasing the earth worm population. These elements work together in a symbiotic relationship to give you a healthier lawn. Core aeration also reduces the run-off from fertilizer and pesticide—and that helps the environment.

Additionally, Exterior Worlds offers garden services, such as:
• Rose maintenance.
• Dead-heading flowers.
• Professional pruning.
• Professional mulch installation and turning over of mulch.
• Training vines.

Serving the Memorial Villages, Tanglewood, West University, Bellaire and River Oaks. Call us at 713-827-2255 to discuss your landscaping needs.

Maintenance Program

A maintenance program is the very best way to protect your landscaping investment. They is meant to be a cost-effective means of getting all the all necessary services you need consolidated at a fixed price point. A maintenance program will also save you money in the long run on replacement costs by preventing the loss of expensive gardens, trees, and hedge plantings. Even your yard will benefit from such a service agreement that has been customized to the specifics of your lawn and landscape by the very same professionals who designed it.

A maintenance program begins with lawn services.
Your lawn needs a lot more care than you may think. It must be trimmed every week during summer and every two weeks during winter. It also has to be aerated frequently so that clay-like soil of our area does not clump too heavily around grass roots and choke off water and nutrients. Fertilizer needs to be added four times per year.

Irrigation and drainage is another vital line item that should be on every maintenance program.
Whatever you do, do not wait until the drainage system floods due to neglect and clogging from debris. Water drainage is a very complicated science on the type of flat terrain that we have here in Houston, and only a landscape professionals can build one correctly and maintain it proactively. Drains must be cleaned throughout the year to remain free of debris. Irrigation pipes should also checked periodically during months when there is little or no rainfall in order to make sure the water is running the way it needs to be. One clogged drain on the day before a storm can result in a flooded landscape on the day after the storm. Be proactive, not reactive.

Pruning of trees, shrubs, and hedges are recommended components of a maintenance program.
Pruning keeps trees and shrubs healthy and makes them look superb. Smaller shrubs, trees, and bushes that often need the most attention and care. Many smaller species are very hardy plants that are always sprouting new leaves and branches. Pruning them helps maintain their shape and neat appearance.

Ground cover and flower beds should get weekly attention. These things too can be covered under your maintenance program. It is important to have your landscape design company perform these services because lawn companies seldom know how to properly weed ornate flower beds or properly trim vines and exotic ground cover species.

Deep root tree fertilization needs be done on any property that has very large trees with extensive root systems.
Big trees have enormous root systems underground. A maintenance program needs to include annual deep tree root fertilization services that will ensure the health, vitality, and longevity of the tree.

Garden Care

Garden care looks simple, but it involves a great deal more than you might think. Quality garden care should always be done by a trained professional, because it involves so much more than weeding and watering plants. It is a sophisticated science of cultivation—many aspects of which must be attended to prior to planting of the garden itself.

One of these aspects is developing effective drain systems in and around the garden. Drains are much more difficult to install than you might think. It is one thing to create a method of water removal, but it is quite another to build it effectively without letting it be seen. Professionals have to do this so that pipes, gratings, and any holes in the ground are concealed. Our planning and development team puts a great deal of care and effort into building drainage systems in this manner, and they also work very hard to periodically maintain them to keep them clean and functional.

The engineering of an irrigation system is yet another crucial component of garden care. Houston often will see several months with no rainfall during the hottest time of the year. The majority of exotic and tropical species that we cultivate cannot survive these months without some type of irrigation. We strongly advise all of our clients to avoid using garden hoses to water these plants. This is because plan leaves, when wet, become vulnerable to fungal growth. Plants remain much healthier and look much more attractive when they are irrigated beneath the leaves close to the ground and the root system.

Still another important part of garden care that must be done in the very beginning is soil preparation. Many of our first time clients have already planted some type of garden that has since become unhealthy or unsatisfactory in appearance. When we go out to visit them, we often discover that the problem began in the beginning with improper soil preparation. Store-bought fertilizer is often the root cause. Not every type of fertilizer will work with every type of plant, and many people fail to read the labels on the bag that tell them just what types of plants the fertilizer is intended to nourish. Most are manufactured for popular species of flowers and plants and may not work very well at all with more exotic or tropical species that people may decide to add to the garden later. It takes knowledge of botany and what nutrients each type of plant specifically needs to create just the right soil mixture required for a diversity of plantings that may otherwise not be able to grow together at all.

The aesthetic aspects of garden care are also important. The basics of clipping, weeding, and trimming even the simplest of flower beds have to be done no matter how large or small the garden is, and no matter how simple or complex it is. Again, we recommend that people not try to do this themselves. Some plants are very sensitive and require very special trimming methods. Furthermore, specific garden designs like parterre garden, the knot garden, the English garden, the Italian garden, and the Japanese garden have to be trimmed by people who know these forms—preferably by the people that planted them.

For these reasons, and many more, we always recommend that garden care be managed as a line item on a landscaping maintenance agreement with Exterior Worlds. This allows the team who designed the garden to consistently and cost effectively maintain its vitality and health.

Residential Landscape Maintenance

Why should I hire a professional landscape company to maintain my yard?
First and foremost, proper landscape maintenance is the best way to protect your outdoor investment. After investing a lot of money on your landscape installation, it only makes sense to protect it and make sure it develops as intended. And that’s where a landscape maintenance program comes in.

Landscape maintenance begins with the proper lawn maintenance. In Houston, lawns typically need mowing weekly through the summer and bi-weekly in the winter months. In addition, most Houston lawns need aeration twice per year, but since you really can’t aerate enough, the more often the better.

Over seeding with rye seed is a great addition to a landscape maintenance plan by keeping your lawn gorgeous throughout the winter. The local temperature range normally dictates that winter rye seed can be spread in early to late October. It is imperative to know, however, that rye grass has some real disadvantages. For example, the rye grass can compete with the St. Augustine grass (typically planted in Houston) for space and nutrition, which makes it very hard on the St. Augustine in the spring. This struggle is particularly apparent in shaded area where grass already has a difficult time growing.

Other Elements Landscape Maintenance Programs Typically Include:

• Shrubs, Ground Cover and Vines. As part of a meticulous landscape maintenance program, hedges as well as other shrubs and bushes should be trimmed frequently to maintain the desired contours. Ground cover and vines should be edged to maintain a orderly appearance. This regularly-scheduled attention will make certain that all elements conform to the overall plan of the landscape design.
• Tree Maintenance. All small trees should be pruned as necessary. It is also a good practice in your landscape maintenance scheduling to do a deep root fertilization of these trees annually.
• Flower Bed Maintenance. Flower beds need to be weeded frequently. It is also a good idea to turn the mulch every two weeks so that you keep the exchange of air and water flowing into and out of the soil.

Fertilization and chemical treatments are the next important step in a landscape maintenance program as they provide a boost to healthy plants and prevent diseases and infestations common to the Houston area.
Optimally, lawns need to be fertilized four times per year. All shrubs, ground covers and vines should be on a similar schedule. Azaleas and gardenias need to be fertilized in April and May, and acidified in February. Roses require fertilization in the spring, which needs to be continued every four to six weeks during the growing season.

Even in Houston, Texas, it can get cold enough to require covering your outdoor plants. Jeff Halper with Exterior World encourages his clients to be proactive when the thermometer starts dropping. “When the temperatures get below 32 degrees for an extended period of time, you need to cover your delicate plants and tropicals,” he says. “Remember not to use plastic. Instead use proper freeze cloth, which allows light, oxygen and water to pass through so that you can leave the plants covered for a few days without suffocating them.”

They will also be mindful of surface maintenance: walkways, driveways, patios and outdoor kitchens should be blown or raked free of debris during the landscape maintenance service. Swimming pools, ponds or outdoor water fountains that accumulate debris during trimming of shrubs or lawn should be cleaned as well.

Exterior Worlds is located in the memorial area. They have been serving the Houston area including River Oaks, West University, Bellaire, Memorial, Tanglewood since 1987. Call Exterior Worlds at 713-827-2255 to discuss a custom maintenance program.

Butterfly Garden Design

Who designed the Butterfly Garden at Hunters Creek Elementary School?

Hunters Creek Elementary School is located at 10650 Beinhorn Rd, Houston, TX 77024. This year Exterior Worlds had the great honor of donating a landscape design for a new butterfly garden in memory of Mrs. Kellie Sewell. The children really enjoy watching the day to day evolution of the project. The garden was completed in April 2008 and the teachers and children have begun using the garden for an outdoor classroom.

When challenged with creating a butterfly garden for a public school, one must always consider a low maintenance design. By using durable materials such as gravel, stone, boulders and native drought resistant plants we created a garden that should survive the rigors of drought, require minimal maintenance, and hard play. The final garden composition consists of a circular stone entry beneath a beautiful scenic mural serving as a backdrop to two seated courtyard gardens. Large boulders and long benches create opportunities for two outdoor classrooms as well as intimate seating spaces for teachers and students between classes. Multi-truck trees such as Bottle Brush are planted for vertical interest and shade. Grasses and butterfly attractors such as Butterfly Bush, Butterfly Iris, Milkweed, Hamelia, Russelia and Turks Cap are grouped throughout the garden. The entire landscape is planted in gravel for easy weed maintenance and completely eliminates the need for annual mulching.
We hope the garden will inspire creativity, imagination and be a source of inspiration and renewal for years to come. Special thanks also to the many parents who have donated their time, energy and finances in making the beautifully painted wall mural a reality.

What other low maintenance elements can you add to your garden? Here are some design ideas for low maintenance landscapes:
• Choose drought-resistant plants, like pampas grass, Plumbago, and Lantana. You might even choose older rose varieties, which are hardier than modern large-flowered hybrids. Many times these old varieties don’t require as much spraying.
• Avoid plants that need continuous pruning, like boxwood and dwarf yaupons (often used in hedges).
• Stay away from plants, such as azaleas, that are susceptible to diseases or insect problems.
• Mulching can be eliminated by using gravel, which rarely needs to be replaced.
• The use of gravel instead of mulch also cuts down on weeds and helps retains soil.
• Use ground covers that don’t need regular pruning and will cover the ground so that weeds are controlled. This type of ground cover is another choice that eliminates or reduces mulching.
• Maximize your annual flowers by installing flowers in planters, urns or bowls to lower the costly replacements season to season. Even eliminate the flowers completely and install perennials, which never need to be replaced.

Call the experts at Exterior Worlds—713-827-2255—and get their landscaping ideas for your home. Exterior Worlds has been providing memorial landscaping designs and services for fine neighborhoods such as Memorial, Tanglewood, West University, and the greater Houston area since 1987.

Low Maintenance Design

What can you to do create a low maintenance landscape design?

A landscape with a design for low maintenance can easily be yours. And it doesn’t have to come at the cost of a bland, boring yard. All it takes is some knowledge about the right plants and techniques. The goals are basically the same as for any other landscape design, except we focus on using materials that reduce the Big Four of ongoing maintenance: watering, trimming, weeding and mulching,” says Jeff Halper, landscape design specialist with Exterior Worlds.

Choices are at the center piece of the process
• Choose drought-resistant plants, like pampas grass, Plumbago, and Lantan. You might even choose older rose varieties, which are hardier than modern large-flowered hybrids.
• Stay away from plants, such as azaleas, that are susceptible to diseases or insect problems.
• Maximize your seasonal color by installing flowers in planters, urns or bowls to lower the costly replacements season to season.
• Avoid plants that need continuous pruning, like boxwood and dwarf yaupons (often used in hedges).
• Mulching can be eliminated by using gravel, which rarely needs to be replaced.
• The use of gravel instead of mulch also cuts down on weeds and helps retains soil.
• Use ground covers that don’t need regular pruning and will cover the ground so that weeds are controlled. This type of ground cover is another choice that eliminates or reduces mulching.

A common problem:
A common mistake is to choose plants that look perfect the day you plant them, but then they take over the space. Thus you create an ongoing maintenance task. A professional Houston landscape designer will help you with this issue.

Even drought resistant plants require some irrigation, water is still essential. An irrigation system on a timer eliminates the need to move sprinklers around and rush around to water at just the right time. Since a little water for a long time is healthiest for plants, you might consider investing in a drip irrigation system. The latest studies show that in the U.S. there are more than 30 million acres of lawn, making grass our #1 irrigated crop. In these days when conservation—of natural resources and your personal resources—is all the rage, now is a good time to consider some alternatives that will save time, money and energy.
High-end residences in Houston and the surrounding areas, such as Bellaire, West University and the Memorial Villages of Piney Point Village, Bunker Hill Village and Hunter Creek Village, have been turning to Exterior Worlds for landscaping ideas and design services, including our design for low maintenance, since 1987. Call us at 713-827-2255 for customized solutions to your landscape design needs.