Lawn Care
Lawn care requires more than mowing and trimming. The soil that supports lawn grass must be rendered amenable to growth. Grass itself must be properly cultivated, nourished, and proactively preserved. Lawn maintenance should be performed at a level of frequency that keeps the lawn in scale and scope with the home. This is perhaps the most important element of lawn service that is so often overlooked by ground services companies. The home is the preeminent focal point of landscape design, and as such, it deserves to be reciprocally accented by the surrounding yard at all times.
Lawn services are always included in a landscape maintenance agreement that is customized to the individual property it supports. While these services include the lawn care basics of mowing and fertilization, they include other services that pay special attention to soil quality, grass cultivation, and lawn maintenance with a strong emphasis on landscaping design. The most essential of these procedures are normally performed in late February to early March before the start of the spring growing season.
Soil Preparation
Before any services can be performed on the lawn grass itself, a series of preparations must be made to the soil that supports it. Land grade should be examined checked for signs of erosion. In some parts of the city, such as West U and the Memorial Villages, soil replacement provisions may need to be included in a landscape maintenance program in order to counter any severe erosion that may result from an unusually stormy winter. Successful lawn care depends on a combination of proper land grade and custom drains that will prevent standing water from accumulating in portions of the yard.
The next preparatory action involves aerating the soil. Houston soil is characterized by a high clay content that has earned it the nickname “gumbo dirt.” It is highly dense and often resistant to water absorption. Aerating the lawn will open up the soil for better water absorption and deeper root penetration. Lawn grasses grown in aerated lawns have a better chance of surviving summer droughts because their roots grow more deeply and because the soil better retains water from irrigation systems.
Grass Cultivation
In many yards, grass must be restored in some places and diversified in others in order to develop a more distinguished landscaping appeal. Landscaping maintenance programs can include turf installations for the purpose of either replacing San Augustine grass altogether, or for the sake of adding accent to certain unique zones of interest. Lawn care programs also provide for chemical treatments in early spring that ward off insects and fungus are also applied in order to give new grass a measure of protection against predation and disease. Irrigation systems are inspected, repaired, and adjusted for warmer weather, and fertilization is applied to both lawn grass and ground covers. Fertilization is repeated at the beginning of each season.
Lawn Maintenance
Mowing services are scheduled at bi-weekly intervals for some properties and at weekly intervals for others. Weekly mowing is generally not necessary in yards that feature large plantings of ground covers, but there are exceptions to this rule. As with all landscape management services, homeowner preference also plays a determining role in how often we mow the lawn. Other services, such as trimming and dethatching, are also routinely performed under service agreement. These keep the lawn not only neatly mowed, but superbly cultivated as a fitting natural complement to the architecture of the home.
When performed at this level of professional detail, lawn care services provide foundational support to both the aesthetics and functionality of the entire outdoor living environment.