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Homeowner’s Guide for Landscape Maintenance Services in NJ

Although every homeowner wants a beautiful landscape that enhances their home, few have the time and energy to devote to year-round landscape care and maintenance. Hiring a professional landscape company for your landscape maintenance will ensure a lush green, healthy lawn and landscape.

Professional landscape care and maintenance will give you more time for family activities and give your landscape a well-maintained appearance. By hiring a professional, you can focus on other things around the house that need attention. Take a look at some of the great services and benefits of professional landscape maintenance services in NJ.

Regular Care and Maintenance

Regular landscape care and maintenance is essential to a healthy lawn and landscape. Without it, your grass, plants, shrubs and trees will become overgrown and cause an eyesore for your home. A lawn that’s too long, full of weeds and shaded by overgrown shrubs and trees will ruin your home’s curb appeal and quickly reduce your property values. When you hire a professional landscape company to take care of your property, you can count on a well-maintained lawn and landscape year-round. Typical weekly services include:

  • Lawn mowing
  • Weeding
  • Border edging for sidewalks, walkways and driveways
  • Cleaning of hard surfaces like sidewalks, walkways and driveways
  • Spring yard cleanup debris and dead winter growth
  • Fall yard cleanup and preparation for winter months

Regular landscape care and maintenance is one of the most important things you can do for your Northern NJ property. It will keep your property well-maintained and help to prevent weeds, insects and outdoor pests. With professional service, an experienced crew will be assigned to your home to take care of all of your landscaping needs on a scheduled basis, so you won’t have to worry about keeping a beautiful, green landscape.

In addition to regular weekly landscape maintenance, a professional Bergen County landscape company can provide various other services to keep your landscape green and healthy. Take a look at other important landscape maintenance services that you should consider for your home.

Landscape and Garden Renovations

A professional landscape company can provide a variety of landscape and garden renovations to enhance the beauty of your home and property. Whether you want to repair a damaged lawn, plant new shrubs and trees or create a colorful flower garden, your landscape professional can help.

Planting New Seed or Sod

If you need a new lawn, your landscape professional can over-seed your existing lawn or plant new sod. Over-seeding puts new grass seed into your existing grass. It can be beneficial to old lawns that look worn and thin. When done correctly, it can fill in bare spots, improve turf thickness and promote greener growth. Sod creates an instant lawn that can be rolled out in one day, but it will cost you more than over-seeding. Generally, grass seed cost about $20 for every 1,000 square-feet of lawn surface, compared to sod that costs an average of 35 cents per square-foot. A landscape professional will select the best type of grass for your lawn and handle over-seeding or sodding at the best time of year for proper growth.

Seasonal Planting

After winter frost is gone, a landscape professional can help you with seasonal planting of colorful flower beds, interesting border plants, new shrubs and trees and special garden areas. When selecting plants, it’s important to consider your existing soil type, light conditions, water requirements and planting locations. All of these factors will impact growth and maintenance requirements. With extensive knowledge of USDA hardiness planting zones, a professional landscape contractor will select plants that will thrive in your existing landscape throughout the seasons.

Garden Design

Expert garden designers can create beautiful annual and perennial gardens that fill your landscape with stunning colors and interesting textures. You can enhance your home with window-box plantings, potted patio plants and lovely container gardens. You can create beautiful specialty gardens that attract butterflies, birds and beneficial insects or lovely scented gardens with inviting aromas. You can even include holiday lighting and decoration as part of your landscape maintenance services in NJ that create unique appeal and ambiance for your Bergen County home.

Fertilization

The best time to fertilize your lawn and landscape is in early Spring when new growth is beginning. Proper fertilization will provide much needed nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and iron for strong root growth and healthy new foliage.

It’s important to choose the right type of fertilizer, such as a light, slow-release formula or organic type fertilizer, that will provide benefits without the use of harmful chemicals. Your landscape professional can choose the best fertilizer for your landscape maintenance service in NJ based on your existing landscape conditions and your property needs.

Although spring fertilization is very important, fall fertilization also provides many benefits. Fertilizing your lawn in the fall will help protect your lawn and plants during the cold winter weather. It helps grass and plants to store essential nutrients in their root systems so they have important food for winter when nutrients get depleted. When the next spring season arrives, stored nutrients will be released through warm soil to promote new spring growth.

Mulching

Mulching is a simple, inexpensive way to improve your landscape conditions and enhance your property with a well-maintained appearance. It adds a protective layer of material to the soil that helps to keep your grass, trees, shrubs and plants healthy throughout the year.

Mulch adds nutrients to the soil and inorganic materials that can benefit certain landscape and irrigation needs.

  • Retains soil moisture
  • Maintains even soil temperature
  • Prevents soil erosion
  • Reduces soil compaction
  • Prevents weed growth

Organic Lawn Care

Organic lawn care provides a safe, chemical-free environment for your home. By using completely natural, organic products, you promote green living principles and protect the environment from harsh chemicals that can be absorbed into the soil and water. Organic landscape care also promotes a natural aeration and drainage system in the soil with organic mixtures that naturally control weed growth, plant diseases and harmful insects and pests. Organic solutions help to establish a natural ecosystem in your landscape where beneficial insects and organisms thrive in the soil. Unlike many traditional lawn care products, organic products contain no chemicals that can potentially harm your landscape, family, children or pets. Organic lawn and landscape care provides safe, chemical-free benefits for healthy plant growth, strong root systems and year-round greenery. Talk to a Bergen County landscape company about the numerous benefits of organic lawn and landscape solutions, typically applied in the Spring, Summer and Fall in Northern New Jersey.

Pruning of Ornamental Trees and Shrubs

Overgrown trees and shrubs not only create an eyesore for your home, they also invite diseases, insects and pests to your landscape. Overgrowth provides a warm habitat and safe hiding place for rodents, field mice, gophers, possums and snakes which can create dangerous conditions for your home. Overgrown trees can get top-heavy and out of shape making them much more likely to fall, especially in storms and high winds. Overgrown trees and shrubs near your house make your home a target for burglars who can hide from view. It’s important to regularly prune your trees and shrubs with landscape maintenance services. Although pruning may seem like a simple task, you can cause serious damage to your trees and shrubs if you do it incorrectly or at the wrong time of year. Pruning tall trees and shrubs can also be dangerous, so it’s best left to a landscape professional with proper pruning knowledge, skills and the right equipment.

Weed Control

In Northern NJ, there are hundreds of weed varieties just waiting to invade your Passaic County landscape. If your landscape is overgrown, malnourished or ill-maintained, aggressive weeds will take every opportunity to pop up in your lawn and landscape. Broad leaf weeds like chickweed, dandelions, ground ivy (creeping charlie), plantain and clover are hardy, strong weeds with wider leaves. They emerge in the lawn and actively grow in cooler soil temperatures during Spring and Fall. Grassy weeds like crabgrass, creeping bentgrass, carpetgrass and witchgrass spread quickly. They can take over your landscape before you even realize there’s a weed problem. One of the problems with grassy weeds is that they grow under the same conditions as regular grass, so there are few herbicides that can be used to control existing grassy weeds without causing injury to the grass. A key to managing grassy weeds is identifying them correctly. For proper weed control, it’s important to include a pre-emergent herbicide in early Spring. Talk to your landscape professional about regularly scheduled proper weed control.

Pest Control

Professional landscape maintenance services in NJ should include proper pest control to keep your lawn and landscape healthy and pest free. Although not all insects and outdoor pests cause damage, those that do can quickly destroy your property. To keep your lawn green and healthy year-round, pest control should be a part of your regular landscape maintenance plan.

An Integrated Pest Management Program (IPM) focuses on safe, gentle pest control solutions. An Integrated Pest Management Program in Northern NJ typically includes:

  • Property visits from an IPM specialist throughout the year
  • An inspection of trees and shrubs during each visit
  • Recommended treatments for pest control as needed
  • Detailed reports that outline problems and treatments

Specialty pest control treatments are also available. These include: Winter pest control treatments; Organic plant root feedings; Organic mosquito, flea and tick control; Organic deer repellent solutions; and Organic tree trunk injections to prevent diseases.

Lawn Aeration

For a healthy, green lawn, you should aerate your lawn as part of your landscape maintenance. Lawn aeration creates small holes in the soil which allow nutrients, water and oxygen to penetrate grass roots. This allows for deeper root growth and thicker, stronger grass, and reduces soil compaction which prevents proper circulation of air, water and nutrients in the soil. The best time to aerate your lawn is in the Spring when new growth is developing. This will give your grass plenty of time to heal and fill in any open areas after soil plugs are removed. Cool-season grasses, common in Northern NJ, should be aerated in the early Spring or Fall. Lawn aeration can be done with two types of tools – a spike aerator and a plug aerator. Your landscape professional can choose the best procedure and equipment for your existing landscape conditions.

Providing professional care and landscape maintenance services in NJ is the best way to keep your landscape green and healthy all year. Talk to a qualified, professional Bergen County landscape company that can provide expert care and top-quality maintenance services for your home.

lawn aeration