Tag: practices

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Landscaping tips and best practices for a low-maintenance lawn







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Photo courtesy of Frisella Landscape Group


As spring arrives, many homeowners are undoubtedly looking for ways to transform the state of their landscaping. From design and foundation to everything in between, this guide can teach you how to use evergreen trees and plants that provide foliage year-round to create the perfect low-maintenance lawn.

Three questions to ask yourself before you begin

Every living thing requires a certain degree of sustenance and nurturing, which is why “maintenance-free” landscapes aren’t entirely realistic. Low-maintenance landscapes, however, are achievable with a few impactful, long-lasting steps. Tony Frisella Jr., president of Frisella Landscape Group, lists three important questions to consider when designing your low-maintenance landscape:

  1. Am I choosing plant material that grows well in Missouri? Choose plant materials that grow well in Missouri plant hardiness zones 5 through 6. These USDA designations indicate how well a plant will thrive given the typical and extreme climate conditions in that area. Keep in mind that although St. Louis is in zone 6, harsher zone 5 winters can cause some plant material to burn and die. As you get closer to downtown St. Louis, zone 6 plants are typically safe – but it’s still important to research the hardiness zone of the plant material you’re selecting.
  2. Have I incorporated evergreens into my landscape? Evergreen trees and shrubs are hardy and low-maintenance. “Some options for low-maintenance evergreens include cypress, arborvitae, spruce and junipers,” Frisella says. “Evergreens come in all different sizes, colors and shapes, so there are many options to choose from.”
  3. Is there year-long interest? Incorporate a variety of plants in your landscape that are bred or cultivated for the features you want. “Missouri natives are colorful and interesting, but remember that being native does not always mean low maintenance,” Frisella says. “Native plants might require less irrigation and fertilizer, but for landscapes surrounding a home or building they can create as much, if not more, debris removal in the spring and fall cleanup.”

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Photo courtesy of Frisella Landscape Group


Frisella encourages homeowners to think of the big-picture when beginning their landscaping journey. Expect that trees and plants may need maintenance and care for two or three years before they’re fully established in the landscape. After that, however, most plants become low-maintenance and only require pruning once or twice a year.

The environmental impact of landscape maintenance

Landscape maintenance requires more than just selecting plants that establish easily. Site conditions, sun and shade impact, wind, drainage, water flow and soil assessment all factor into landscape design and upkeep.

“We can find the best fit where plants will be the happiest,” Frisella says. “Once we know our landscape will be functional, we can incorporate beauty. We use different design compositions, layouts and principles to add harmony to the landscape.”

Trees and plants that provide year-round foliage

Trees with year-round foliage can add a distinct element to your landscape from one season to the next. For example, the magnolia grandiflora (Bracken’s Brown Beauty) is a broadleaf evergreen featuring beautiful dark green leaves that shine along with fragrant white flowers in the spring.







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Photo courtesy of Frisella Landscape Group


There’s also the cedrus deodara (Karl Fuchs), which serves as a great focal point for any landscape by giving height and texture to a home. Other notable recommendations include the tsuga canadensis, a low-maintenance conifer that favors shade and touts a feather-like texture, as well as the chamaecyparis nootkatensis (Glauca Pendula) which features lacy, blue-green foliage paired with a dramatic weeping branch structure.

Other landscaping tips and best practices to know

Research is key! Make sure the plants you select fit your goal of achieving a low-maintenance landscape.

It is also important to keep an eye on your irrigation system, making sure your plants aren’t getting more or less water than needed. Many times evergreens begin to yellow and die from the inside out, which is a sign of a plant receiving too much water. If a plant is dying from the top down, this is a sign of drying out. “Don’t be afraid to get into the soil a few inches,” Frisella says. “Then you can assess the situation.”







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Photo courtesy of Frisella Landscape Group


If you get stuck or need another opinion, consult a landscaping expert for input.

Frisella Landscape Group, 2214 S. Big Bend Blvd., Richmond Heights, frisellalandscapegroup.com

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April class series teaches Florida-friendly growing growing practices

On April 4, I will start out teaching the Florida-Friendly Landscaping class sequence.

This study course, which runs from 9 a.m. to noon for eight consecutive Tuesdays, will teach you how to mature vegetation below in Florida and deliver you with answers to all your burning concerns. The course will be held at the UF/IFAS Extension workplace, 3695 Lake Drive, Cocoa.

The to start with class, which I consider is the most essential for gardening accomplishment in Florida, will cover gardening with the soil meals web, followed by composting and vermicomposting.

I will describe how nature’s food world wide web supports crops by furnishing vitamins and guarding them from ailments. In addition to their nutrient-biking endeavours, the soil meals website makes organic make a difference, which increases the soil’s water and nutrient-keeping capability.

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Take the pledge to adopt Florida-Friendly Landscape practices

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Landscaping Maintenance Best Practices For Businesses

Tammy Sons is the CEO of TN Nursery and an qualified plant advisor who researched Horticulture. She enjoys her relatives, the outside and nature.

The year 2022 is upon us, which can only imply one factor: warm summer time weather is appropriate all-around the corner. And it’s critical for organizations to sustain a expert exterior in addition to an exceptional interior all year extended. After all, a client will very first notice the outward overall look, or the landscaping and the making style and design, before they at any time stage inside of your place of work.

As a result of my conversations, I have discovered that there are a great deal of simple—but necessary—steps that significantly as well many corporation leaders ignore when it will come to landscaping. Below are a few to continue to keep in thoughts:

Pruning

1 of the most significant matters providers really don’t typically overthink is pruning. Note that this is an completely diverse tactic from hedging when doing work with some thing like a bush in your yard.

Effectively, you need to have to know which plants to prune and which vegetation to hedge to manage suitable expansion. If you (or your landscaping crew) conclude up undertaking possibly a single improperly, you can expect to only locate by yourself shelling out additional time exterior, and your crops will continue on to get unwieldy as well.

Mowing

Along the similar strains, mowing the lawn is a topic that I uncover lots of organizations fairly misunderstand. They consider the only time they have to have to mow is “when the grass receives also large” or when they never like the sight of it. In particular as the temperatures continue to rise, this just isn’t genuine.

Certainly, your company’s lawn will be mown most likely on a weekly basis, but it also requirements to be performed so thoroughly. Don’t adhere to the similar paths and designs with each individual mow, as you happen to be only heading to problems the grass under the bodyweight of your lawnmower. As a substitute, make an hard work to alternate styles to motivate as much progress as attainable.

Mulch

Have a appropriate mulch bed all over all your vegetation and trees. For starters, this acts as an vital protective layer that will go a prolonged way toward avoiding harm from any mowers, trimmers or other pieces of devices that you may be utilizing. Remember that if you knick a plant with your trimmer in the improper spot, it could possibly appear great currently, but you could be looking at a considerably larger difficulty down the highway. Additional than that, a mulch mattress can assistance nourish your vegetation and trees all calendar year prolonged, generating absolutely sure they appear their very best.

Applications Of The Trade

It truly is generally suggested to make confident you are employing the appropriate gear for the appropriate job at precisely the correct time. Pruners, trimers, mowers—they all have their place. But these spots are surely not interchangeable. Make certain you or your landscaping crew have an understanding of what the ideal device is for the aim you’re striving to execute to give on your own the best shot at achievement shifting ahead.

Favorable Plants

Below are some finest plants to use close to offices that are small-upkeep:

1. Perennials: These are ideal for borders, walkways, flower beds or gardens with borders around business office complexes. Perennials, compared with annuals, also return each individual spring and in no way have to be taken up for the wintertime year.

2. Flowering Trees: Spring-blooming options like cherry trees, plums and flowering dogwoods provide a satisfying aroma as perfectly as splendor in the heat spring months.

3. Evergreen Conifers: Use these trees for magnificence and calendar year-round beauty. When most plants drop their foliage, these remain wonderful and environmentally friendly, even in severe winter weather conditions.

4. Shade Trees: Oak and maple trees are rapidly-rising and offer shade in spots close to concrete or pavement.

For firms, I recommend acquiring these types of bare-root crops, as they are light-weight, cost-effective and effortless to plant. Bare-root plants ship for a great deal a lot less than transport containerized vegetation and are quick to set up. Moreover, no heavy equipment or landscaping experts are required to include these crops.

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Candice Luter Art and Interiors founder applies lean-process practices

“I took a roundabout journey,“ Candice Luter states. (Courtesy 1 Million Cups)

Turning one’s interests and talent into a total-time position generally does not arrive with out a several detours.

“A whole lot of people today I communicate to, they want to do it but they’re really intimidated by it,” Candice Luter said. “I was the similar way.”

Luter will share her expertise Nov. 10 at Cedar Rapids’ 1 Million Cups. The Cedar Rapids indigenous launched Candice Luter Artwork and Interiors immediately after remaining laid off from her income and progress task at a design and style studio for the duration of past year’s COVID-19 shutdown.

1 Million Cups

What: Candice Luter, proprietor of Candice Luter Art and Interiors, will discuss with 1 Million Cups organizer Rina Jensen

Where by: Olympic South Facet Theater, 1202 Third St. SE, Cedar Rapids

When: Doors open at 8:30 a.m., application will begin at 9 a.m., Wednesday, Nov. 10

Registration: Admission is no cost but you ought to sign up at https://little bit.ly/3vhRpwV

“I had this flourishing aspect business,” she reported. “I realized it could be whole-time, but I just didn’t have the time to do it.

“I took a roundabout journey.”

Luter commenced upcycling — recycling castoff products and resources into her personal ornamental wall hangings, tailored mirrors and home furnishings — out of requirement, to furnish the dwelling she’d purchased.

She liked the system, and remaining the task she’d held for various several years at what then was Rockwell Collins to take the posture at the structure studio.

“People imagined I was mad,” she explained. “They claimed, ‘Why would you leave, you’re a solitary mom?’ But company The united states wasn’t for me.

“I begun acquiring into power equipment and making home furniture for my household, and it just took off.”

Luter to start with bought her creations at area farmers’ markets , “but that was a ton of perform. I ran my lender account down to zero. I experienced to re-strategize.”

She identified the remedy in Etsy, the e-commerce internet site targeted on handmade and vintage products these types of as jewelry, garments, home decor and home furniture, and artwork.

Providing via the site authorized Luter to make her products and solutions to purchase.

“Nothing is at a reduction since I get paid in advance of time just before I do the get the job done,” she noted. “That’s how it labored for me.”

The distinctive-desire marketplace also designed it less complicated for prospects to obtain her function.

“It’s tough with a (stand-alone) website,” Luter stated.

“If men and women really don’t know you’re there and you really do not know how to travel website traffic, you’re not heading to get the customers you want. I just want to make the things.”

Etsy put Luter’s work in advance of a different market place she hadn’t envisioned — specialised stores and layout firms on the lookout for new inventory, and even lodge chains looking for that specified look for its rooms and lobbies.

“A great deal of the suppliers of this world, they are all on the lookout at Etsy for merchandise,” Luter mentioned. “I didn’t know that at the time, right up until I started getting contacted by stores.

“I’ve truly experienced the chance to do some design and style perform for some major stores.”

Luter’s merchandise are now marketed by way of Des Moines-centered West Elm and can be observed in some Marriott Resorts.

Luter and her personnel of 6 nevertheless make the item to-order, simplifying her funds movement.

“Our item is getting promoted as premium merchandise, so we can just sort of drop-ship to the shoppers,” she claimed. “It’s type of like tiny-batch manufacturing.”

Whilst her curiosity and skills drew listed here absent from her earlier occupation, Luter used the skills she acquired there to her very own company.

“I bring my products management, my lean-procedure sort of considering,” she claimed.

Continued advancement leaves Luter with less time for making.

“I’m typically undertaking emails,” she claimed. “I’ve been making an attempt to set apart a minimal more imaginative time for myself, but I’ve been so fast paced. I’ll post (a new design), and one of the suppliers will say, ‘Can we submit that, far too?’ It is a fantastic challenge to have.”

That point of view has served Luter well, and she thinks it applies to some others, much too.

“I just arrive back to my roots, reminding myself how significantly I’ve occur,” she claimed. “I hope through that message there are people today who appear at their personal situation and the place they hope to be likely.

“They can even now do anything with the dreams and the skills they have. Really do not enable your conditions determine you and maintain you back again.”

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Rainy day best practices for lawn care and landscaping

Landscaping and lawn treatment services vendors are no strangers to rainy times that can cause operate delays and effect profits. On the other hand, undesirable climate doesn’t essentially have to lead to head aches or damage customer associations. The important is to not leave your customers in the dim.

By adhering to three simple methods, service companies can make sure they have a program in position for individuals rainy days to better hold clientele glad, workers chaotic, and, ultimately, their companies functioning efficiently.

1. Share your wet working day coverage early on

By sharing a rainy day policy upfront, your shoppers know that you won’t be coming in the occasion of lousy climate, lengthy just before the rainy day essentially will come. The critical right here will be to ensure this plan is extra to all estimates, customer agreements, and appointment reminders. This way, clients concur to it from the beginning of your connection, which will assistance you regulate any stress they have about a delay when the time arrives.

If you use lawn care software program, that coverage can be conveniently additional to your quotation template the place it will mechanically show up on every quote you deliver. Here’s an instance of what your wet working day coverage could look like:

“Our aim is to preserve your lawn tidy, our workers safe and sound, and our products in excellent condition. In the celebration of rain, we reserve the ideal to alter support instances or hold off appointments as desired, nonetheless, you will only be billed for our time once that provider has been offered. We recognize your comprehension and your enterprise!”

This plan need to be re-shared with all your shoppers at the start of the rainy period, and be guaranteed to include things like it in your appointment affirmation or reminder messages. Furthermore, make confident to make versatility into your routine throughout the wet time. This could incorporate featuring a two-day services window or acquiring workers agree beforehand to work for a longer period several hours or weekends soon after it stops raining.

2. Make positive clientele are notified of rain delays

Sharing notices of rain delays is critical to trying to keep clients informed and pleased, not impatiently thinking if you’re going to display up. As shortly as you know that weather disorders will maintain you from working that day, send an email or text information to notify the customer you are rescheduling. There are a several methods to do this:

Mass concept

Deliver a solitary concept to your list of clients with visits scheduled for that working day. If you are making use of garden treatment software package, this can usually be performed with Mailchimp and Zapier. Here’s how to do it:

  1. Style and design an e mail template in Mailchimp with your rain delay recognize, your wet-working day policy, and a url to your customer hub so the customer can see their new appointment time.
  2. Your customer listing should be up to date in Mailchimp if you are applying the integration attributes provided by garden treatment computer software. If you are using it individually, although, export your consumer details and import it into Mailchimp.
  3. You can possibly manually pick that day’s clientele, or established tags for clients primarily based on the day you provide company (or other criteria) so you’re only emailing that group.
  4. Ship your wet working day e-mail!

Social media announcement

Really encourage your shoppers to comply with you on social media for company updates. Submitting a rainy working day message will let numerous of your shoppers to see it across multiple platforms.

Be absolutely sure to also notify upcoming consumers that their scheduled work may possibly be affected, too—even if they aren’t booked for the wet working day. You know that rain can toss off your routine by quite a few times, but your shoppers don’t, and they may well not understand that you are nevertheless acquiring caught up, primarily if it is sunny on the day they assume to be serviced.

3. Don’t enable a wet working day go to waste—use it productively

Even though a wet working day indicates there isn’t get the job done remaining carried out on a client’s house, there’s nonetheless much that can be carried out back at the place of work. Once consumers have been notified about the delay, a wet day can be the fantastic time to examine off all the things on your to-do listing that you generally really don’t have time for. This can consist of:

Tackle the administration demands: This is the best time to total the paperwork that brings in business—sending out quotations, bidding on new careers, and adhering to up on invoices.

Comprehensive the necessary routine maintenance: Do not wait around for tools to crack down until it’s fixed—use rainy times to sharpen and cleanse resources, support autos, or improve the oil in your mowers. You can also tidy the store, do stock, and run any leftover work debris around to the dump. This is a fantastic way to preserve your crews occupied and paid—and nonetheless aiding your organization.

Use this time to restock: Go on a components store operate for a lot more soil, fertilizer, gloves, spare pieces, and whichever other equipment or supplies you need to keep your organization functioning.

Greatly enhance your marketing and advertising: Update your website and social media with new promotions, challenge photographs, or testimonials. You can also use this time to believe about new promoting strategies for your business enterprise.

Provide worker schooling: Now is the time to prepare your personnel on a new software or method. You could have to deal with some restrictions for the reason that of the weather conditions, but use your imagination—your workforce will be substantially more most likely to remember what they discovered as a result.

Proceed supplying stellar shopper provider: Consumer assistance issues every single working day, not just on wet days. Examine-in with your shoppers to see how you’re performing. There is no much better time to get their sincere feed-back and ship thank-you notes.

We simply cannot always forecast when it is going to rain, but in garden care and landscaping, rainy times are going to happen—it’s not a subject of if, but when. By following the finest practices outlined previously mentioned, you can have a prepare in location to ensure that your business enterprise is held managing, your workers keep on being occupied, and, in the long run, that you convert a wet day into a shopper relations win.

Justine Burns