How to impress your customers, prospective tenants, and the whole community?
Serve them a chocolate cake. Everybody loves chocolate cake.
You’re not a good baker? Your second-best bet is a healthy, green, tidy expanse of lawn.
Joey Schneider, a branch manager at Level Green Landscaping, walks us through the commercial lawn care services to get you there.
Lawn Mowing on Commercial Properties
“In commercial lawn care here in the Mid-Atlantic, there are 24 lawn mowing visits every 7-10 days, and not always on the same day,” he says.
During the spring, when grass grows quickly, Level Green mowing crews show up weekly, he says.
In July and August, when grass growth slows, they mow three times a week. The 24 mowings begin in mid-April and continue through the first week of November, Schneider says.
“Non-irrigated sites in the summer don’t need mowing every week,” Schneider says. “Tall fescue, which is the common turf type here, is a cool-season grass that grows a lot in spring and fall.
“If the grass is a bit taller at a warehouse facility in between visits, you don’t notice it as much as you would at your home,” he says.
Lawn Fertilizer and Weed Control
We recommend a four-application fertilization and weed control program as part of commercial lawn care services.
Here’s how it breaks down:
We visit twice in the spring — first in March or April to apply fertilizer, pre-emergent crabgrass killer, and post-emergent broadleaf weed killer to target weeds like dandelion and clover.
A second visit in May or June repeats the process. Those two applications target weed seeds before they germinate, then again after any sprout.
We visit a third time in July or August to spot spray only for any broadleaf weeds that have popped up. No need to spray everything just for the sake of spraying. Spot spray is better for the environment, but still targets weeds.
Then, a final round of fertilizer goes down in October or November to help your turf store nutrients for the winter and emerge strong and healthy in the spring.
By helping roots grow before winter sets in, you help ensure that the lawn will green up quicker in the spring and become more resistant to disease and drought.
Commercial Lawn Care Services: Keeping It Clean
The typical commercial lawn care services contract includes a visit in February or March for spring clean-up, Schneider says. A messy lawn makes your whole property look unsightly and neglected.
Crews remove leaves and debris, pull weeds, and get the property ready for the growing season. They rake any old leaves leftover from fall into the lawn and go over them with a mulching mower. That breaks them down into nutritious bits beneficial to your turf.
There are typically two or three visits in the fall, too, to clear leaves and debris — one visit before Thanksgiving and one before Christmas.
Aerating and Overseeding Commercial Property Lawns
Aeration and overseeding can work wonders on a commercial property lawn that needs a boost, Schneider says.
Aeration uses a machine to pull out tiny cores of soil from your lawn, allowing water and oxygen to get to the roots. Now, your lawn’s roots can grow nice and deep, producing a lush, healthy carpet of green.
If you have high-traffic areas — and many commercial properties do — they can especially benefit from aeration, since they‘re more prone to soil compaction.
Aeration is usually followed by overseeding, as the holes created by aeration are perfect new homes for that grass seed.
Does Your Lawn Need Lime? Get a pH Test
Why does your lawn pH matter? Important nutrients for grass are available in soil when the pH is at the right level. If your pH is off, your grass won’t get the nutrients it needs, even if you fertilize regularly.
Here in Maryland, it’s rare that soil pH for turf grass is too high. It’s typically too low.
When your soil pH is too low, it’s time for lime, a soil amendment made from ground limestone rock, which contains calcium carbonate and magnesium carbonate.
Add lime to your soil, and these compounds increase the soil's pH, making soil less acidic and more alkaline. Then your soil can use the nutrients in your fertilizer, and flourish.
Commercial Lawn Care Services Make It Easy
Scheduling all these services might seem complicated, but not for Level Green customers.
“Property managers don’t want to have to manage the landscaping,” Schneider says. “They want to sign a contract and know their property will look good. They don’t want to have to call us. They want us to just take care of it.”
That’s what happens.
“We’re set up for that,” Schneider says. “Our crews are trained, our account managers are familiar with commercial needs. Everything is taken care of.
“We really understand the commercial sector,” Schneider says. “We know what they’re looking for and how we can improve their landscaping to help further their business goals.
“If we’re at an office building that needs to lease space, we make sure they have something extra to attract new clients. If we’re doing a warehouse that might be interested in reducing costs, we can suggest ideas, like replacing mulch with turf.”
Level Green account managers prepare an annual landscaping budget for customers, Schneider says.
“They pick and choose what they want to include,” he says. “It saves them extra work. We do it proactively. We know August through October is their budget season.”
Bottom Line: Hire Commercial Lawn Care Services for an Attention-Grabbing Lawn
“The lawn is the first thing anybody sees when they drive up to a property,” Schneider says. “If it’s not maintained well they think, ‘Do I want to live here? Do I want to shop here?’
“Lawn is a big visual,” he says. “If grass is tall and there are weeds everywhere, it says something about the inside, too.”
Trust Your Commercial Lawn Care Services to Level Green.
Healthy turf does a lot more than make your commercial property look pretty.
It reduces run-off, minimizes erosion, cleans the air, neutralizes pollutants, and absorbs rainwater.
It also feels great on bare feet, when you’re out on the lawn eating chocolate cake.
If you’re not already a Level Green Landscaping client, we’d love to add you to our growing list of happy customers. Our focus is on commercial properties like offices, mixed-use sites, HOAs, municipalities and institutions in Maryland, Washington DC and parts of Virginia.
Contact us at 202-544-0968. You can also request a free consultation online to meet with us one-on-one.
We’d love to hear from you.
