As the landscaping slowly wakes up in spring, responding to more sunlight and warmer temperatures, it has to shake the kinks out of its system before it gets into full growth mode. It’s kind of like how you feel when you’ve been sitting for a long period of time and you are stiff and achy when you first get up.
Everything needs that time to adjust after a long period of rest and hibernation. Your commercial landscape is no different.
This is a time when you might see some common landscape problems that pop up in spring or linger from winter that you’ll want to make sure your landscape service provider addresses. Preventing or alleviating these problems now can save you time and money later if they were left to escalate or cause any lawn or landscape damage.
5 Common Spring Landscaping Problems on Commercial Properties
Winter never lasts forever. Spring is a time of rebirth in the landscape, and it can use a little sprucing up.
There will always be enemies to the health of your commercial lawn and landscape. But staying ahead of most of the foes your property faces can ensure you’re off to a great start to the growing season.
Here are 5 spring landscaping challenges to be aware of at your facility and how to nip them in the bud before they become bigger problems.
1. Snow Plow Damage
Snow plows are essential for removing heavy snow from your driveways, parking lots, and entranceways.
But sometimes during this clearing, turf damage can occur. This is no fault of your snow and ice management professional; after a lot of snow falls, it can occasionally become difficult to see where the lawn begins and the concrete ends.
Once the snow melts and is gone for good, you can see some edges of the lawn have been roughed up by the plow.
To fix this landscape problem, your commercial landscape pro can rework the ground and reseed or install pieces of sod to replace areas that suffered excess damage.
2. Salt Damage
In Northeast Ohio, spring landscaping rarely comes without suffering some minor impacts from winter. Just as snow plows can sometimes uproot turf, salt can burn the lawn, leaving you with brown patches of turf near pathways and parking lots where salt was frequently applied over winter to melt the ice. This turf tends to stand out because it seems almost colorless as other parts of the lawn are greening up.
Many times, lawns will bounce back from salt damage as spring settles in, but in really bad areas, your commercial landscape professional can add some gypsum to the soil to balance its pH.
3. Snow Mold
Lots of snow sitting on your lawn can trap moisture and matte the lawn down. This can result in a fungal disease called snow mold. It typically appears in tan, gray, or even pinkish spots on the lawn.
To prevent snow mold, we don’t like to leave your commercial grass too long in late fall. Longer grass can more easily matte under heavy snow and become more prone to snow mold.
Most lawns recover on their own, but to alleviate your lawn of particularly bad areas of this spring landscape problem, your landscaping pro can rake out your lawn to help it dry out, bringing air in, which will naturally flush snow mold out.
4. Winter Burn
Sometimes, Northeast Ohio’s cold temperatures can cause a bit of winter burn on plants like boxwoods.
If some of the branch tips brown out from winter burn, your commercial landscape professional can prune out any dead areas of your shrubs to take care of this landscape problem.
5. Weeds
As your lawn and landscape begins to green up in spring, it’s inevitable that these same conditions -- sunlight, rain, and warmth -- that cause your plants to awaken also bring out the worst spring landscaping problem on commercial properties: weeds.
Crabgrass can be especially troublesome in spring if left to its own devices. 
Putting down a preemergent herbicide at the right time of the season is an important service to ensure you limit the amount of crabgrass that can break through while everything else is greening and thickening up.
Time for a Spring Landscaping Assessment
Even if winter is harsh, you definitely want your lawn to bounce back as quickly as possible once spring arrives.
While we can’t say these landscape problems won’t strike your commercial landscape, we can say that the right commercial landscaping partner can help you stay on alert and combat these problems before they cause too much damage.
Worried you might miss one of these spring lawn and landscape challenges in Northeast Ohio? We get it. It's hard enough to tackle the tasks on your list, let alone add these to it.
Turfscape can help you enjoy spring -- headache free. We are used to finding and tackling these issues on our clients’ sites, so we’ve got your back.
Want to learn more about our commercial landscape 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.
