facility focus looks its best. Your landscape contractor can help decide which varieties best complement the climate and style of your property, as well offer advice on the best colors and designs that highlight your property. Before the installation of color, proper steps need to be taken to prepare your plant-ing beds so your investment will provide the returns you desire. This includes tilling the soil to the proper depth, adding necessary amendments and adjusting your irrigation system’s runtimes so the plants will receive the moisture they needs for the color to flourish. Proper maintenance and fertilization is needed on a consistent basis by a land-scape professional to ensure a long season of bloom and health for your annuals. After installation, it is important to work with your landscape professional to estab-lish a proper pruning schedule. Pruning allows the trees and shrubs on your property to maintain their greatest flow-ering or fruiting potential. However, pruning is not a one-size-fits-all process, and it is essential that you tailor how much you prune any tree or shrub to its growth habit. In order to prevent harm to your plants, it is important to select a landscape contractor who considers the specific needs of your property as well as the image you want to convey when it comes to pruning. Planning a landscape that will work for every season takes time and consideration but will result in a property looking its best all year long, season after season. And, a healthy and attractive landscape creates an agreeable, friendly environment that can help commercial property owners maximize the value of their sites. The partnership between a landscape professional and the property manager is the key to this long-term, successful man-agement strategy. CM Enlisting the help of an expert with a green thumb for the plants present in your land-scaping will increase aesthetics and make your property more appealing. The “smart” controller is the most tech-nologically advanced development in water conservation on the market today. Regardless of how efficient an irrigation controller’s watering schedule is, it must be able to take into account always changing weather conditions — specifically, rainfall and evapotranspiration (ET) — to protect the health of the landscape and gain maximum efficiencies. ET is the amount of water lost from the soil through evaporation plus the plant’s water loss, which are both dramatically affected by weather conditions. A smart controller uses current weather and ET information to water your landscape only when it needs it. Smart controller systems work with virtu-ally any controller, converting a conventional irrigation system into one that is weather smart and that self-adjusts according to accurate, real-time data. As the weather changes, your smart con-troller receives automatic hourly updates and won’t allow your controller to water unless needed. This results in significant water savings and a healthier landscape. An irrigation system retrofitted with a smart controller, moisture sensors, drip irrigation and high-efficiency heads can provide cost savings that will pay for the initial purchase and installation costs in less than three years. Deciduous Decision-making Simple aesthetic changes to a property’s landscape can also greatly enhance a prop-erty’s appeal. A relatively basic landscape can be improved simply by replacing non-flowering plants with flowering varieties. If you want instant impact and a dramatic change in your property’s curb appeal, use annual color. Annual color can provide simple changes to a property’s landscape, which will go a long way in making your property stand out from the competition. With a variety of colors, species and sizes — and the ability to thrive in the shade or sun — annual flowers can revitalize the look of your grounds. Selecting plant and flower varieties in col-ors that complement both exterior building materials and interior color schemes creates a unifying effect that will help your property Ken Hutcheson is president of U.S. Lawns, one of the commercial landscape industry’s largest and most successful companies with over 250 franchise locations nationwide. With over 30 years of experi-ence in the green industry, Hutcheson’s insight has helped shaped the commercial landscape franchise industry into what it is today. He can be reached at [email protected]. For more about com-mercial property curb appeal, visit the U.S. Lawns website at www.USLawns.com. 40 CM/Cleaning & Maintenance Management ® • October2012
CMM – Archives Oct 2012: 40
