After having your property professionally landscape designed and built by Outdoor Craftsmen, there is the upkeep. Many homeowners want to perform basic maintenance task themselves, which should be doable if not for the self-sabotaging (but easily rectifiable) mistakes unwittingly made by the homeowner.
A few examples:
- When a plant/shrub/tree needs to come out and you replace it with something entirely different. Different height and width, or different micro-zone, or invasive, or clashing with other plantings around it etc. Refer to your design master plan or drawing that has the plant key on it and purchase the same exact planting for the replacement. This maintains the integrity of the design and how one plant relates to all the other plants in its near vicinity.
- Wonky irrigation – either plants get too much water or not enough, and most in our dry area assume it’s the latter. Either way, a poorly performing irrigation emitter or system can do an otherwise showcase landscape into a mess. Either do your own irrigation audits, or hire a professional to do so once a month throughout the growing season.
- Don’t introduce insects or fungi – we see a lot of folks buy wood mulch and pack it up and around a tree with a liberal amount of mulch being used in the process. This kind of mulching is bad because it cuts off healthy oxygen flow to the plant/tree’s roots, eventually forming what is called a fungal barrier. A fungal barrier can eventually rot the tree.
- If you see a problem – do something. Being proactive early on with anything appearing distressed in the landscape could save you a lot of time and money down the road. Tackle a landscape problem as soon as you see it, or hire someone to do it for you. This way, issues remain small and manageable.
- If you don’t like something – say so. Landscape designers like Outdoor Craftsmen are good at listening to their clients and can help you remodel pocket or vignette areas of your landscape to your liking. What they did originally was fabulous for a long time, but now you want to change. Go ahead and try something new – just make sure it is in keeping of the original overall design (unless you are big areas of the design). We don’t want to see palm trees in amongst the ponderosa pines…
Outdoor Craftsmen provides ongoing landscape maintenance services for many of their clients – click here and scroll down the page to read the details.
