You want to keep your commercial property looking its best, no matter what the time of year it is.
But chances are, you might not know which landscape maintenance services in Northeast Ohio you need to perform and at what specific times of year they make the most sense.
Though there’s obviously some overlap, many of the services being performed do have a certain timeline in which you can complete them in order for them to be most effective and add the most benefit to your commercial facility. And it’s important to have year-round landscape services because it keeps up your property aesthetics, helps you stay within your budget, and keeps goals and renovation tasks in check.
To help make it simple for you, we’ve rounded up a complete landscaping maintenance calendar that includes all of the essential landscape maintenance services that should be performed on your Northeast Ohio commercial site in order to keep your property in tip-top shape all year-round.
Monthly Landscaping Maintenance Schedule For Commercial Properties
Since we know you might be looking to understand what commercial landscaping services you must perform each month, we’ve put together an easy-to-follow commercial landscaping calendar for your convenience.
Let us walk you through the year and help get you on your way to the commercial property that suits you and your property best, hopefully making your job easier and reducing your project management headaches. This can even result in savings since you’re paying a consistent monthly price for all of these services instead of trying to cram a bunch of maintenance tasks into just a few months.
Also, remember that it’s OK if you’re reading this blog later in the summer, realizing you might have missed out on optimum timing for a specific task. No need to stress out. The right professional commercial landscaping partner can help catch you up and get your property back on track or help you sort out your budget, goals, and expectations. Some services are certainly best performed at certain times of year so waiting is the best strategy, while others can be squeezed in sooner rather than later. The best partner will go over all of these options with you so you can make a confident and informed decision.
January
January is a great time for planning commercial landscape design initiatives on your landscaping calendar.
Even if you had a great design in place years ago, no commercial landscape design remains perfect forever. The reason trees, shrubs, perennials, and annuals add beauty to your commercial property is because they grow, change, and adapt over time. They emerge in greens and bloom with bright colors, and then transition in fall to deeper, richer hues.
But because plants grow, they need care and attention to remain healthy and look good. You can’t just plant them and ignore them or they could suffer and look overgrown, unkempt, and messy.
A renovation project to improve areas of your commercial site or a new landscape design for an additional area is a great task to conduct in January. You can plan ahead, talk about your priorities and plans, and then put them on a schedule that works for you to ensure your budget lines up with your goals. Your commercial landscape partner can help you focus on areas that make the most sense to increase the positive attributes of your facility.
February
February on the commercial landscaping calendar is a good time for spraying ornamental dormant oil.
Why? Some tree and shrub pests are very small to the point where you can barely see them before they cause some nasty symptoms to appear later in the growing season, ruining your perfect commercial landscape picture.
That’s how a dormant oil treatment as part of your commercial tree and shrub care services can help. This natural product helps prevent these tiny pests like aphids, thrips, mites, and scales from infesting your trees and shrubs.
Since these pests are more likely to live through the winter, dormant oil protects your precious plants before they come out of dormancy.
March
Another landscaping maintenance calendar to-do that can instantly elevate your commercial property is the addition of spring annuals.
Northeast Ohioans definitely crave color after a long winter. Spring annuals give you a chance to give them this color they want before your competitors and before other plants begin blooming.
There are so many choices when it comes to spring annual color. Fall bulbs like tulips, daffodils, and hyacinth can pop up early in spring giving your commercial site brilliant whites, yellows, and blues. Flowering shrubs like forsythia can add pops of gold to draw visitors in. But in March, adding creeping phlox, pansies, and violas can bring amazing frost-resistant, cold-tolerant blooms to the commercial landscape that come in a wide range of cool and warm tones.
April
As the weather is warming up on Northeast Ohio commercial properties, it’s time to focus on turf repair on your monthly landscaping maintenance schedule.
Winter weather can wreak havoc on your commercial turf. This happens from the buildup of heavy snow and ice on your property, which can lead to winter burn, especially when winters get out of control.
To combat this, your commercial service professional will look for snow mold potential where the lawn looks matted down, trapping moisture. These areas can easily result in disease, showing tan or pink-looking splotches. Most lawns will recover, but raking out the worst spots can help dry them out and bring in air to get rid of snow mold.
Also, your commercial maintenance crew will look for plow damage from snow removal. To repair your turf, your commercial property manager will check out your lawn edges, look for damage, then churn up the ground in those spots and reseed the areas so they can look good as new.
On top of snow damage, you’ll also find salt damage. Salt is essential to help you melt ice, but occasionally salt can burn your lawn, leaving you with some brown turf spots around pathways and near parking lots, which is where salt is applied most frequently. While the lawn typically bounces back from salt damage as spring emerges, your commercial landscape pro can improve the soil in these areas with a gypsum application to balance the soil’s pH levels.
In addition to turf repair in early spring, spring fertilization is also important for commercial turf. It gives your lawn the nutrients it needs to develop top growth. A pre-emergent herbicide application at this time will also help handle pesky spring and early summer weeds before they get a chance to establish themselves in your grass.
May
Next on your landscaping maintenance calendar is mulch.
Mulch adds so much value to your commercial landscape. It suppresses weeds, keeps the soil temperature even and keeps the soil itself moist, as well as adds some important organic matter back into the soil as it breaks down.
The ideal mulch application is approximately 2 inches of double-shredded hardwood mulch for you to get the maximum benefits.
On top of the benefits, mulch also makes your commercial site look really polished and professional, giving it a curb appeal and value-boosting edge.
June
Now that we’re into summer on the monthly landscaping maintenance schedule, it’s time for some more color.
Summer annuals are great additions for entryways to draw the eyes in, as well as around signage to boost brand recognition. Areas where people hang out – outdoor break and lunch spots, walkways, etc. – can also get a dose of some vibrant color to keep people who visit your site interested and engaged.
July
Insects will happen in any landscape, and July is a great time on the landscaping calendar for using grub preventative tactics and battling surface feeding insects.
The key to grub control for your commercial lawn is to take care of them in their early stages or even before they hatch so they don’t have a chance to cause serious damage to your lawn. This is best done with a preventive treatment to your lawn. We will also come back and inspect your lawn later to ensure grubs haven’t returned if you see some signs that are worrisome to you.
For treating your lawn for surface-feeding bugs like chinch bugs and bill bugs, professionally applied insecticidal soap and granular insecticides can handle current infestations. Your landscape professional will treat them when they are actively feeding. Bringing in a commercial lawn care professional for a surface insect control treatment can significantly reduce wide scale chinch bug damage if you catch it early enough.
Since billbugs can be harder to control, annual aeration, which we talk about in September, can also help prevent these pests.
August
Hardscaping, which includes all nonliving elements in the landscape like patios, pergolas, walkways, benches, bricks, stones, rocks, boulders, gravel, wood, and lighting, can also be key components of commercial landscaping. And this is a great item for August on the commercial landscaping schedule.
Paver patios and walkways can complement other areas of your commercial site while providing key spots for function. Hardscapes like retaining walls can control erosion and create tidy landscape beds while also looking beautiful. If you’ve been thinking about adding a hardscape to your commercial facility, this is a great time of year to plan that out with your service professional.
September
Your commercial landscaping calendar should include lawn maintenance tasks that can prime your commercial property for better growth the next year.
Aeration and overseeding your commercial lawn are great tasks to perform in September to improve your lawn. Aeration, as the removal of small plugs of soil, gives your tired, worn, compacted lawn a chance to more easily receive oxygen, nutrients, and water at the root level where it’s needed most.
Overseeding is a perfect addition here because those plugs that are removed through aeration create the perfect holes for the seed to contact the soil and germinate. This improves the germination process considerably, making overseeding more successful in strengthening and thickening your commercial lawn.
October
Flowers aren’t just for one season as part of your commercial landscaping calendar. You can have seasonal color all year long in Northeast Ohio – fall included.
In autumn, flowers like mums, kale, ornamental cabbage, ornamental peppers, purple fountain grass, and sweet potato vines can add texture and impact to your containers or commercial landscape beds.
Remember to target these colors in your more high-impact, highly visible areas on your site, including near signage, entryways, gathering spots, etc.
November
Before winter arrives, you want to make sure you have done good leaf cleanup from the fall. Raking up the leaves or blowing them into piles and disposing of them or removing them keeps your commercial lawn looking fresh, while also preparing your commercial site for winter. November is a great time to put this on the landscaping calendar.
This is so important because leaves that are left on your lawn can become wet from snow and ice and smother your turf during the winter, causing diseases to develop.
Along with this, we like to make sure we do a fall fertilizer and pre-emergent to target root growth in your grass going into winter and stay ahead of any weeds that will sit and wait to sprout up in early spring on your property.
December
Finally, your commercial landscaping calendar wouldn’t be complete in December without dormant pruning.
Dormant pruning is trimming your deciduous plants when they are dormant. The timing is ideal specifically after the leaves have fallen, you’ve undergone multiple days of really cold temperatures.
When all of the leaves have fallen off of your deciduous plants and shrubs, it’s much easier to see the tree’s structure while trimming. This makes broken, dead, and dying branches stick out, so they are simpler to prune. Also, when dormant pruning, you can see crossing branch structures and any other issues so you can prune appropriately to give your trees and shrubs space and room to grow. This is also helpful if you need to prune to ensure more sunlight reaches the plant’s entire structure.
Dormant pruning also causes less stress on the plant and allows for robust new growth the following spring. It also ensures you’re trimming when insects and diseases are less likely to take advantage of those open wounds before they heal.
Stay Ahead of Your Commercial Landscaping Maintenance Calendar With Turfscape
When your commercial property looks nice year-round in Northeast Ohio, you enhance your business image and elevate your curb appeal.
We hope this monthly landscaping maintenance schedule helps you do just that. A proactive approach done by a professional grounds maintenance service provider can keep you on schedule each month, as well as help you plan into the future.
If you still have questions or need to get on a better schedule for your site, give Turfscape a call. We can save you time and energy and keep your commercial landscape looking polished and professional. We can also recommend some great ideas to make your facility look better.
Want to learn more about our commercial maintenance services for your Northeast Ohio commercial site? Get started today with a free quote. We’ll review your options together so you can make a great choice.
