Don’t discriminate
I love seeing and knowing the entire garden or strata complex landscape. Not just the high-profile entrance and car ramp areas but every little corner, including raised box beds and back of the building areas. You must move beyond the “beauty strip” to succeed.
This isn’t the first time I’ve written about it; but I remembered the idea when I substituted recently for another vacationing landscape foreman. His main helper volunteered to cover the back of the building by himself, which sounds like he reads my blogs. Not so. He’s a smoker and by working at the back of the building he gets to smoke a lot of “fags”. My only worry, with the province in drought conditions, was a human-caused fire in the neighbouring wild zone.
Tasks
Low-profile zones are weedy; full of small weeds and big trophies. There is also some seed drift from the wild zone next door. Cultivation fluffs up the soil nicely as well.
Another less obvious task was establishing tree wells around trees planted in the lawn. Without tree wells to warn lawn care workers about trees, there is bound to be trouble as lawn care machines crash into tree bark. This leads to stress and, if repeated weekly, to death.
Blemishes
When we walked the back area later in the afternoon to assess everything we noticed several blemishes. One was tree stakes installed way too low. Normally, stakes are roughly at chest height, depending on the tree. The stakes we saw were at knee height which makes them ineffective.
Another blemish worth covering in a separate blog, involves shrub planting. Many of the shrubs were sitting high with portions of their root balls exposed. That’s crazy because the roots desiccate and die. Read my next blog post to find out how this can happen.
Residential low-profile corners
Yesterday, my job was to clean-up a backyard residential garden. It was full of magnolia leaves from last fall; there were some dead shrubs and dead branches to remove, and of course, weeds. When I did the final clean up blow I discovered a hidden corner behind a stack of chairs. A perfect example of low-profile garden neglect.
Small weedy areas like this produce weed seeds so it’s best to keep everything in check. Remember, check every single area around your house and garden. Don’t discriminate!
