Landscape Maintenance: Houston and the Surrounding Area
Landscape Maintenance: Houston and the Surrounding Area
Houston is known for its gracious neighborhoods and communities—places of comfort and luxury, refinement and sophistication. This ambiance extends to residential landscaping and includes lush plant materials, custom ornamental iron fencing, opulent outdoor water fountains deluxe outdoor rooms, and plush outdoor kitchens.
Because Houston is an essentially coastal city, it has a tropical climate that allows you to lay sod in Houston lawns all year long. One of the most popular sod types is St. Augustine grass. Other good choices for sod in this climate are warm-season grasses, such as Bermuda and zoycia. In this climate, lawns should be mowed and edged weekly during the warm months and bi-weekly in winter.
Today’s Houston homeowners have found, just as the first settlers did, that a properly-designed drainage system is an important feature in their landscape. This region regularly handles deluges of rain followed by periods of drought. In the wet years, standing water acts as an incubator for that dreaded native inhabitant, the mosquito, and creates problems for a house’s foundation. Additionally, the seesaw between wet and dry years causes the region’s clay soil to turn into a nearly-impenetrable surface, which only exacerbates the drainage problems. A good drainage system, with regular maintenance, is the obvious solution.
The high-end communities in and around Houston strictly enforce their rules regulating landscape projects. The appropriate regulation codes are filled with what is and is not permissible, governing all aspects of building, including the location of structures, height of structures, general permitting, tree removal and excavation equipment and usage.
Because these sets of rules protect everyone’s property value, homeowners who are contemplating landscaping projects would do well to consider hiring professional landscapers who understand these rules and will abide by them.
More than 175 years ago, two brothers, the New York real estate promoters, John Kirby Allen and Augustus Chapman Allen, bought a parcel of land at the confluence of White Oak Bayou and Buffalo Bayou with plans to build a city named in honor of the hero of Texas’ war for independence—Houston.
Houston is now the fourth largest city in the U.S. It has a diverse business community, plus cultural attractions, scientific facilities such as the Texas Medical Center, and educational institutions, including world famous medical schools. Wouldn’t it be great fun to know what the Allen brothers think of the current version of their dream?
