Corey - Green Earth Environmental

Annual Lawn Maintenance Tips

by Corey | Jul 25, 2023 | Landscaping

These annual lawn maintenance tips will teach you how to maintain a healthy lawn and keeping up with lawn maintenance is an important part of property care. After sod installation is done, there’s work to not just do during spring and summer but year-round. Taking care of one’s lawn promotes growth and protects the grass. A healthy lawn that’s been properly maintained is something truly to behold.

The best practices for lawn maintenance range from a proper mowing schedule to fertilizing, irrigation, and thatch control. The best lawn is one that’s dense, with a healthy amount of growth, and quality. Here is how to make it happen in your yard landscaping.

Mowing The Lawn

How you mow your lawn will determine the density, uniformity, and aesthetic of a lawn. Why mowing is often done incorrectly or is neglected is because mowing the lawn is time-consuming and rather boring compared to other lawn maintenance tasks. Even so, it’s incredibly important.

To mow your lawn properly, make sure the lawn’s dry which will ensure the grass clippings are evenly distributed. Leave those clippings on the lawn. They have nutrients and water in them that will break down, helping your lawn maintain its health. It will also allow you to cut down on fertilizer by a third if you use your clippings in this way.

Ensure when you cut your grass, you remove only about a third of the grass blade. Anything more and you end up with shallow grass which cannot take up the recommended amounts of water and nutrients.

Fertilizing Your Lawn

We can’t dig into lawn maintenance tips without discussing fertilizer.

The three main nutrients in fertilizer a lawn needs are nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium. Nitrogen gives the grass its dark green color as well as its density. Phosphorous promotes plant maturity and good root development. Potassium helps with wear, drought tolerance, and winter hardiness.

There are many types of fertilizer you can use. Inorganic fertilizer, such as ammonium nitrate or ammonium sulfate. Organic fertilizer, such as activated sewage sludge or animal by-products. There is also synthetic fertilizer, including IBDU, urea formaldehyde, and sulfur-coated urea.

For home lawn care, you will want multiple yearly applications of fertilizer, likely every 6-8 weeks Typically, this is once in early spring, once in late spring, again in late summer, and then a final fall fertilization. An even application of fertilizer is also important in achieving a uniform green lawn.

Annual Lawn Maintenance Tips Watering The Lawn

Watering Your Lawn

A normal rainfall pattern may not provide sufficient moisture during the growing season. You know it’s time to water your lawn when there are footprints left behind after walking across, if you’re seeing dark blue-green in color, or if grass blades are folding inwards.

The best time to water is early morning with no wind. This ensures the most even water distribution. Be careful not to use too much water as too much can cause thatching, fertilizer leaching, disease, and weed problems.

The proper amount of water to give a lawn is to a depth of 10-20 cm. To get this, place a jar in the area being watered. If after 15 minutes, you have 0.5 cm in your jar, you want to get within the 2.5 cm to 4 cm range at most. Use this as your measuring stick.

Keep in mind that a lawn can survive 4-6 weeks in a dormant state during summer dry periods. After rain or water returns, expect the lawn to green up again in 7-10 days. When the lawn is dormant, do not fertilize, do not mow, and keep foot traffic off it.

Dethatch The Lawn In Spring And Fall

Every spring and fall, dethatch and aerate the soil. Thatch is a layer of decaying leaves, grass, stems, and roots that build up into a wet spongy patch. Thatch can harbor insects and diseases, and restrict grass from growing into the soil properly.

Thatch can be prevented through frequent mowing, proper watering, and regular fertilization.

Breaking up thatch and checking the lawn for similar decaying organic matter should be done every six months.

Tackling Damaged Lawns At The Right Time Of Year

Lawns can become thin and damaged by sources like insects, diseases, weeds, and overuse.

To repair a lawn by overseeding, do so in mid-August through to mid-September. Add compost or topsoil, then overseed at double the seeding rate. Water several times of day and one week after seeding, reduce watering to twice a day until you see the seedlings are established.

If there are areas that have irreparable damage, cut out any dead or damaged areas to a depth of 4 cm. Rake it. Add fertilizer. Place sod on and water it to ensure it does not dry out. Newly sodded areas require 10-14 days to root. This can be done any time of year.

Also, come early spring, this is another important time of year to evaluate the health of your lawn. Assess what damage the snow did. Rake your lawn to encourage turf to dry up and fertilize lightly to encourage growth. This will help your lawn recover as spring carries on.

More Annual Lawn Maintenance Checks To Do: From Weeds To Insect Management

Every two months, look at your lawn for weeds. Pull them out by hand and/or raking. Mow regularly to prevent seed formation.

For insect management, it requires ongoing care. A well-maintained lawn that receives regular watering typically does not have to fend off many bugs. That said, the most common lawn insects include hairy cinch bugs, grubs, sod webworms, the European crane fly, bluegrass billbug, and turfgrass scale all require their own method of management.

Lawn Health Annual Lawn Maintenance Tips

Improve Lawn Health With Professional Lawn Maintenance And Lawn Care

Have your lawn professionally managed by the experts at Green Earth Environmental Landscape Services. We can help analyze the health of the grass and soil, ensuring that disease, pests, and damage are handled efficiently without delay. Achieve the best-looking lawn with proper annual maintenance. If you aren’t sure where to start with your lawn maintenance, schedule a consultation with one of our experts to find out more on what the next steps are as they relate to lawn care.

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7 Principals Of Landscape Design

The 7 Principles Of Landscape Design

by Corey | Jun 28, 2023 | Landscape Design, Landscaping

To achieve a calm, optimal outdoor living space, the 7 principles of landscape design play an important role.

While a landscaper or property owner may opt for different stylistic choices depending on what a property calls for, everything relates back to the key principles of unity, scale, balance, simplicity, variety, emphasis, and sequence.

As we delve deeper into each principle, you will discover how they can be modified with line, form, texture, and color. All of these key tenants of landscape design are interconnected, relating to one another in several ways.

For an experienced landscape designer or property owner looking to do a little of their own layout building, knowledge of these is integral to arriving at a natural, intuitive property that is easy on the eyes.

1. Unity Organizes With Emphasis

There are various ways to use unity within landscape design. Unity can be defined as a way to attract attention by creating orderly groups of line, form, texture, or color within a property’s landscaping.

Unity can define small rooms or small gathering spaces in various pockets of an area’s landscaping. Curves and lines have their role to play in clustering elements together.

The direction and arrangements of plants, trees, and greenery, especially those that repeat, influence the appearance of unity.

Texture is another way to find unity. Foliage and twig size, the size and shape of leaves, spacing of leaves and twigs, colors and shading, and the gloss or dullness of leaves. These textures can present unity, or a lack of unity when little consideration is given to it.

Lastly, color is perhaps where most people see and define unity. Color is very powerful, and influences mood and feeling. As much as it can provide relaxation and calmness, it can also be confusing and anxious when misapplied.

2. Scale Compares Elements To The Fixed Structure

Scale is all about size. Typically, a fixed structure is used, i.e. a house, to compare landscape elements, i.e. a tree. The manipulation of scale can make elements feel large or small.

‘Relative scale’ relates to comparative size, or the relationship of one component to another. Nothing exists independently. There is a relationship between everything on and around a landscaped property. A natural relative scale feels relaxing and peaceful, blending landscape elements with a comparable size to a fixed structure.

Comparatively, there is ‘high scale’ which is used by overly large, tall structures. It can make a small space feel smaller. There is more action in high scale landscape design. It encourages people to move through a space. ‘Low-scale’ also exists and is used most frequently in residential landscaping as an aesthetic to encourage stillness, rest, and relaxation rather than movement through.

All of these terms and concepts around scale help determine what the correct size of individual elements should be.

7 Principles Of Landscape Design Balance

3. Balance Is A Lesson In Equilibrium And Symmetry

Balance is the relationship between left and right, and up and down, and front and back. The symmetry in design, or lack thereof, communicates a lot about the feel and atmosphere of a landscaped property.

You have ‘formal balance’ which is a repetition of left and right. In a sense, this is perfect symmetry. This balance is stable, stately, and dignified. It’s a go-to for a lot of landscape designers and property owners because of the value placed on symmetry but it is not the only way to use balance.

‘Informal balance’ is when there is a difference between left and right. This gives you a feel of liveliness, curiosity, and movement in the landscape design.

As one might imagine, there are lots of ways to use balance intentionally to craft the perfect landscape layout.

4. Simplicity Uses Minimalism And Creativity, And Repeats

Simplicity is to what degree there is repetition. Instead of creating unity with clusters of similar elements, simplicity encourages constant change but can also use smaller clusters so long as there’s not too much variety.

An example of simplicity is a row of shrubs repeating over and over using the same plants. While each plant is its own element, the repetition causes the eye to interpret this row as a single element, allowing landscape design to be creative with form.

Simplicity is often used to repeat plants, make sweeps or groupings, to spread out common greenery across a landscaped garden, and to duplicate common elements in ways that are pleasing to the eye.

Too much simplicity, however, is a bad thing. This is where some variety is needed to keep things interesting.

5. Variety Is About Cultivating Excitement Using Differences

Variety relates closely with simplicity but is its own principle. Variety is about the diversity and contrast of form, texture, and color. Without variety, you have monotony. You need variety to create excitement and avoid dullness.

The most straightforward way to do this in landscape design is by toying with height. A row of shrubs, for example, sits low to the ground. Without anything else, it can be fairly dull to look at. However, add a tree or two into the mix. The contrast in height adds variety and interest.

Another way to do it would be use different pots and plants, or different materials next to an element of simplicity.

Just like too much simplicity, on the contrary side, too much variety can feel awkward. It takes a balance of the two to work.

7 Principles Of Landscape Design Variety And Emphasis

6. Emphasis Choose Dominant And Subordinate Elements

In landscape design, you have the foreground and the background, and there are elements that dominate and others more subdued and secondary.

If every element is a dominant, nothing stands out. Just like you can have too much dominance, you can also have landscaping that lacks enough dominant elements. It takes meticulous planning to define dominance and subordination of a property’s elements, or risk having everything look the same and for a majority of people to lose interest in what they’re looking at.

Emphasis is done by manipulating sizes, shapes, groupings, and also incorporating the unexpected, such as a color, material, or item you might not expect to see where it is.

Emphasis is where a landscape design artist plans out centerpieces and how to best present them.

7. Sequence Defines Changes In Form, Color, Texture, And Size

Lastly, you have your sequencing. How does everything look together and is there a natural rhythm?

You don’t want sheer chaos in your landscape design. Just like in unkempt nature, patterns emerge. There are rhythms in texture, form, color, and size that hint at life, growth, and movement.

You can create sequences based on texture, such as moving from coarser texture plants to finer-textured plants, or do so with color as you move from cooler tones to warmer tones. Proper sequencing creates waves through landscaping that allows attention to naturally flow across everything with beauty.

These 7 principles of landscape design are followed, challenged, and used in gardens and landscaping everywhere to craft intelligent, intuitive outdoor spaces for homeowners and property managers all over the globe.

If you want to transform your outdoor space with professional landscape design, contact Green Earth Environmental Landscaping today! Simply give us a call or fill out the form below.