3 Options for Proactive Landscape Maintenance
May 24, 2016If you’re familiar with our blog you’ve likely read our previous article on the benefits of proactive lawn care maintenance. From maximizing your flowers and growth to early identification and treatment of problems, residents and businesses alike have found that by selecting a proactive landscape maintenance plan with Hively Landscapes they’re maximizing their landscape investment, while avoiding costly replacements, removals, and other landscape troubles.
We offer three forms of proactive maintenance, and have outlined each below.
5 Lawn Care Tips to Keep Your Grass the Greenest on the Block
April 15, 2016If your landscape is like many, the most visible part of it is the grass. Grass, or turfgrass, is a source of pride and often frustration for many DIY homeowners. The team at Hively Landscapes would like to help alleviate some of that frustration by providing you with a few simple lawn care tips we’ve learned over the nearly 50 years we’ve been beautifying landscapes in Dover, PA.
If you’re interested in helping improve your lawn’s curb appeal, without pouring much more of your hard earned money into your landscape, we encourage you to follow these lawn care tips.
Let it GROW! The ideal length for the most common grasses in our region (fescue and bluegrass blends) is between 3 and 4 ½ inches. Grass cut to this length is better able to withstand dry stretches and longer grass can help inhibit the growth of many common weeds.- MULCH it! Most professionals prefer to mulch grass clippings generated by mowing and not to bag them. The truth is that grass clippings contain a high percentage of nitrogen, which returns to the soil when these clippings break down. Nitrogen also happens to be a key component of fertilizer and very beneficial to healthy grass.
5 Things to Look for In Your Next Landscaping Company
March 31, 2016Choosing the right landscaping company is easy, when you know what to look for.
With spring underway, it’s now time to dive headfirst into everyone’s favorite landscape maintenance tasks! If you enjoy this dirty, sweaty, and tiring chore as much as we do, you understand that this job comes with no finish line. As soon as you think you might be done, it’s time to start all over again. Lawn and landscape maintenance is a hobby that just keeps on giving! Day after day, week after week, year after year. Mowing, pruning, weeding, mulching, etc, etc, etc.
Ok, we realize it’s not quite as much fun for everyone as it is for us, and that’s why we offer proactive maintenance plans and other landscaping services for those people who just can’t find the time or the passion to do this kind of work.
So, if you don’t want to spend your wonderful spring, summer, fall, and even winter hours pushing a mower, digging out weeds, or pruning unruly trees and shrubs (and who can blame you?), how do you select a landscaping company that will do the job right? How do you know that company will treat your lawn and landscape with the same respect that you would, if you actually wanted to do all the work yourself?
Here are five things that you should look into before hiring any landscaping company:
- Reputation
While it may seem obvious, we still find it quite common that people will hire landscaping companies strictly on price, with no consideration of reputation or references. Don’t make this expensive mistake! There’s a reason why these companies charge $5 to trim a bush, and the next spring you find that your beautiful bush is barely alive. So check into what companies your neighbors are using. Then ask if these companies have solid references. If your neighborhood is like most others in Pennsylvania, you get bombarded in the spring and summer with flyers advertising grass mowing for a price that just seems too low to be true, such as $20.00. The truth is, these companies cannot maintain that price, and once the season kicks into high gear they’re nowhere to be found. We encourage you to check with friends and neighbors to see who their landscape contractor is, and if they’re happy with the work the company is doing for them.
The Many Benefits of Proactive Lawn Care Services
March 30, 2016Lawn care service and maintenance are much less costly than replacement, but many businesses and homeowners fail to realize just how much time and money they can save on their landscaping each year simply by planning ahead. Just like your car which goes into the shop regularly for oil changes, tire rotations, and tune-ups to avoid engine problems, worn out tires, or other hazardous issues, your home landscape can receive the same kind of preventative care to save you headaches from plant diseases or insects, overgrown and unruly plants, or even the loss of your favorite tree or shrub.
We want to help you enjoy your landscape investment for more than just the short term! Our blog today aims to detail a few of the benefits of choosing proactive lawn care services with an experienced team of landscape contractors like the one you’ll find at Hively Landscapes.
Patio Paver versus A Stamped Concrete Patio – Which is Better For Me?
February 12, 2016Potential and current customers frequently ask us if they should choose patio pavers or a stamped concrete patio. There’s no simple answer because every homeowner has different desires and expectations, so we begin to help them choose by explaining the significant differences between these two materials. Let’s clarify that “pavers” is a generic term for interlocking concrete pavers. Patio pavers are manmade from high-strength concrete and come in an almost infinite variety of shapes, thicknesses, textures and colors. We use pavers frequently, and we also construct many hardscapes from natural stone materials, using similar installation techniques.
Costs
Let’s get right to it; many people assume that a stamped concrete patio will be less expensive than a paver patio. In some cases, they will be right but since no two design/installations are the same, it’s not really possible to make this judgment without some research. It’s also not really an apples-to-apples comparison, as we will explain.
Construction
The most important part of any patio installation, regardless of material type, is the base. This is the foundation of the final surface and as the saying goes, what you see is “only as strong as its foundation”.
5 Winter Lawn Care Tips for Your Landscape
December 23, 2015
If you believe that the care of your landscape simply stops once the weather gets cold, you are making a mistake that we see all too often and a mistake that leads to costly damage to your plants. Even if this winter turns out to be mild overall, it’s still winter, and the stress of weather that changes from cold to warm to cold can damage your trees and shrubs if they aren’t properly prepared. So, you can help your plants flourish once the spring arrives by following these simple winter lawn care tips:
Holiday Planter Ideas
November 30, 2015With the Christmas season quickly approaching, we thought it would be appropriate to share some holiday planter ideas that you can use to decorate your business or home. You can easily make those entryways more festive and welcoming to your guests or customers with some great looking custom holiday decorations.
If you’re looking for ideas for creating a great holiday container, follow these helpful tips:
- Start with a variety of greenery. Boxwood, cedar, pine, cypress, and fir trimmings all make for great additions to your planters or window boxes. You can also mix in a living element with dwarf varieties of evergreens.
- For a mix of colors and texture, you’ll want to mix in some branches, pinecones, or fruit. Some favorite examples include yellow or red twig dogwood branches, winterberry branches, corkscrew willow branches, bittersweet, Osage oranges*, pomegranates, and sweetgum pods.
- Add some decorative lights. If you have something already planted, wrap it in Christmas lights or even add a bow, and then decorate the base with a skirt of evergreen boughs.
*Osage oranges really aren’t oranges. They’re those green fruits that look like brains, and they also go by the names of hedge apple or monkey ball.
To help you develop your own beautiful planters, we’ve put together a sampling of containers that will give you some inspiration and ideas.
The Secrets to Building a Great Fire Pit
October 29, 2015With the fall ushering in cooler weather, many people are looking for ways to enjoy the outdoors as long as they possibly can. A fire pit is a solution to this problem, but you’ll want to make sure you aren’t setting yourself up for a headache later due to poor planning or installation mistakes.
Our experience has taught us several secrets to fire pit building that most people overlook. We wanted to share these secrets with you if you are considering adding a fire pit to your backyard living space.
- You’ll need to determine what regulations local municipalities have enacted in regards to fire pits in your area. You don’t want to go through the trouble of building a fire pit only to be forced to remove it later.
Prepare Your Landscape for Fall with These 5 Tips
September 21, 2015Alexander Graham Bell said it best when he declared “before anything else, preparation is the key to success.” If you want to enjoy a vibrant garden year-round, now is the perfect time to begin preparation for the potentially unforgiving fall and winter months. A fall maintenance checklist is critical to success and will help you hit the ground running in the spring when you begin to dig out from the winter lull.
At Hively Landscapes we would like to help you get your landscape ready, and have compiled a list of some of our favorite fall landscaping tips to share with you. These are just some tips to help you achieve the successful landscape you will enjoy for years to come.
Take Care of Your Lawn – One of the best things you can do for your lawn is aeration. Aerating pulls thousands of small cores out of the ground. This allows both oxygen and water to reach the root system of your turf. This encourages a deeper and stronger root system that better resists the hot dry summer months in our area. Aeration is best done by a professional with the proper tools, though this equipment is available for rent at most tool rental stores. Give your grass a high-phosphorus fall fertilizer mix to encourage root growth, and be sure to keep after any leaves that drop as these can cause dead spots and prevent fertilizers from reaching the ground. **BONUS** Add the collected leaves to a compost pile and then mix up the pile every week or so to aerate. You can then use this leaf compost in the spring to nourish your trees, shrubs, and even your lawn!
The Proper Way to Water
August 31, 2015
Maintaining your garden can be a chore if you are ill-equipped to handle the job. We’re not just talking about bringing your gloves and pruners, but even more importantly the knowledge of how to properly care for the landscape you and your landscape designer have created.
One of the most common issues with a plant’s ability to survive is the way they are being watered. While it may seem simple enough, you’d be surprised how often a lack of water or an excess of water leads to a plant’s demise. You want to keep your plants all looking great year-round while also avoiding the costly expense of replacing them for something as preventable as drying out or being flooded.
The secret to great watering is to ensure that the root zone gets a sufficient amount of water. This seems simple, right? The problem begins when all the other variables in watering come into play. Some variables that will affect the way you water include: