As a commercial property manager in Northeast Ohio, you want shoppers to invest in goods and services at your retail center. You want patients to feel comfortable and confident using your healthcare facility and medical services. You want employees to enjoy coming to work and using the many areas you have for breaks and meetings. You hope potential homeowners drive through your HOA and long to live there.
No matter what type of commercial facility you manage, you want visitors and guests to notice your property in a positive, professional, and productive way. You have a goal of drawing people into a safe, welcoming environment that is well-manicured with high-end landscaping.
Nothing attracts more attention than the right commercial landscaping improvements that can elevate curb appeal and entice your visitors and guests to stay a while. Even in winter, you want to add just the right impressive finishing touches to your commercial site to create a big impact without breaking the bank.
Let’s discuss some winter landscaping tips for property managers to focus on in Northeast Ohio and the key benefits to maintaining and enhancing curb appeal for maximum impact this winter.
Landscaping In Winter: Services That Can Boost Curb Appeal
It’s natural to see a commercial building exterior in Northeast Ohio and make an assumption about what it’s like on the inside based on how the outside looks. This type of instant judgment is just part of human nature.
If your building is attractive and the landscaping is healthy and tidy, visitors, customers, and guests will think it’s a good place to work, shop, visit, or live. But if it looks run down or shabby, they likely won’t think that much of your business or brand. By elevating your curb appeal with winter landscaping tips, you can give people more reasons to enjoy your establishment.
This can also help you build trust and a positive perception with potential customers all year long – not just when the weather is favorable. You want an exterior that reflects the interior to give people confidence in your business. By doing this, people see you pay attention to business details, and it shows you’re committed to a quality experience. All of this can boost foot traffic to your facility.
What kind of winter improvements can make an impact? Here are the top ones we suggest.
1. Protect Your Commercial Trees And Shrubs
Your trees and shrubs do quite a bit for your Northeast Ohio commercial property. They bring color and greenery in spring and summer. And by fall they put on a grand show with ruby reds, brilliant oranges, golden yellows, and even bronzes and plums.
But in order for your trees and shrubs to do their jobs, they need regular care all year long. Particularly in winter, you can do a few things to maximize tree and shrub health.
First, you can opt for dormant pruning services. During this process, your commercial grounds maintenance provider will make some more aggressive cuts when your plants are dormant. This reduces stress to the plant and can help revive and rejuvenate it while limiting its recovery time. Your trees and shrubs reward you after this winter landscaping improvement by delivering vibrant comebacks.
You can also protect trees in winter by applying a desiccant called Wilt-Pruf to help prevent winter burn. Some sensitive shrubs and arborvitae can even be wrapped with burlap to prevent wind burn from those freezing gusts, as well as salt burn from the addition of salt to walkways, roads, or parking lots to melt ice.
Help your trees with some winter TLC, and they’ll deliver with increased commercial property aesthetics and value.
2. Save Money By Focusing On Tree Removal During Winter
While we’re talking about trees, you may notice some trees and your property are looking a bit sour. Maybe they have suffered from some wear and tear or are having a hard time recovering from a major impact like summer drought or an insect or disease infestation.
Things like this may cause you to want to remove some trees that are no longer serving you on your commercial property.
Winter may not only be a better time for you to do this task on your site because you have the budget dollars available., but it’s also a better time for other reasons. It’s a slower period for tree care companies, so you’re likely to get the help you need quickly. And this may also result in savings for you.
Now you can focus on other landscaping improvements that can improve the look on your facility, such as planting some new trees and shrubs where others have faded over time or been removed.
3. Remember That You Can Still Add Color In Winter On Your Commercial Property
Your tree and shrub leaves have put on a spectacular autumn show, but those leaves have to fall at some point. And many of the blooms on your perennials have faded away. Things become more and more gray in winter in Northeast Ohio.
But that doesn’t have to stop you from bringing color and vibrancy to your commercial site. This is a winter landscaping tip that can do wonders for your site.
How can you do this? First, adding some evergreen plants into your commercial landscape design can bring a more inviting and welcoming appearance in winter – and the rest of the year as well. You can even add containers to entryways or highly visible areas and fill them with evergreen plants, boughs, branches like red twig dogwood and festive lights.
Now is also the time to plan for the upcoming spring. You can be the first commercial property to bring color after a long, gray winter by planting bulbs in winter. Then, starting in early spring, you and your guests, tenants, shoppers, and visitors will be rewarded with amazing pops of whites and blues and violets, as well as reds, oranges, and yellows.
4. Target Insects And Diseases That Are Plaguing Your Commercial Property
Menacing insects and pesky diseases can cause some poor aesthetics on your Northeast Ohio commercial site.
Our winter landscaping tip: Don’t be fooled into believing these things don’t exist during the winter months. Sure, insects and diseases slow down when the weather cools, but they can still cause damage to the plants on your facility and ruin your business’s curb appeal, value, and positive perception.
In winter particularly, snow mold disease can impact a number of your plants. By having a professional commercial grounds maintenance company on the job during winter maintaining your landscape, you ensure short-term and long-term health for your property’s landscape.
5. Get Creative With Your Growing Perennials
As plants grow on your commercial property – and if you’re taking care of them well – they may grow quite large.
If you are trying to stick within your commercial maintenance budget, you can take advantage of this by splitting multiplying perennials and moving them to areas that need a little more color.
Winter landscaping tip: This is a simple way to improve your overall landscaping while saving money.
6. Don’t Forget To Manage Your Commercial Irrigation System
All of your commercial property’s trees, shrubs, perennials, annuals, and turf areas require regular irrigation throughout the growing season.
But to keep that system operating in an optimal fashion, you have to maintain it before winter sets in.
This means shutting down your commercial irrigation system properly. This includes blowing out any remaining water and winterizing the system. This landscaping improvement helps you avoid having any remaining water in your irrigation system that can freeze and damage pipes and cause flooding – a hassle and expense you don’t need to deal with on your commercial facility in winter.
Landscaping Improvements Aren’t Just for Spring, Summer, And Fall. Remember Winter In Your Planning
Winter can be a tricky season when it comes to landscape maintenance on commercial facilities.
We get it. It’s a cold, dreary time of year, and you’re focused on just keeping the snow and ice under control.
But this is also a great season to focus on some key areas of landscaping in winter that can really give your property an overall boost.
As you look around and try to figure out what you can do, we understand it can be overwhelming. Let Turfscape help. We can help you prepare for a successful winter, so you can put your facility in the best position possible for a great visual appeal all year long.
Want to learn more about our winter commercial landscape maintenance services in Northeast Ohio? Get started today with a free quote. We’ll review your options together so you can feel confident and make a great choice.
