Business owners know that time is money. As many businesses prepare for the holiday rush, they find themselves with less and less time to devote to “non-essential” tasks. Regrettably, one of the things that often gets neglected is landscape maintenance. Even during the warmer months of the year, time spent on weed triming, mulching flower beds, and watering may be far better utilized managing day-to-day business operations.
If you have limited time for landscape maintenance, you might want to think about renovating your property to reduce upkeep. By taking the time to know your property and making smart design decisions, you can create a beautiful landscape that takes up less of your valuable time.
In this article, we will go over five ways that you can reduce the maintenance needs of your commercial landscape:
5 Ways to Design Easy-to-Maintain Landscapes
Embrace Native Plants
Native plants are one of the simplest methods to design a low-maintenance landscaping for your home. Use them as often as possible. Although non-native flowers can provide a lot of color and vitality to your property, they might not be used to the local climate and will need special attention in order to flourish.
Native plants are a great option for business landscaping since they are naturally adapted to the local soil and environment. Colorado is home to an incredible variety of native plants that will add color, texture, and life to your property with relatively little care.
Consider Grass Alternatives
Arguably the most costly and labor-intensive part of landscaping is lawn care. Grass needs a lot of water, nutrients, and care to thrive. The concept of grass lawns has come under much scrutiny in recent years as much of the western US deals with widespread drought. In fact, many local governments have implemented watering restrictions and zoning codes for new construction that limit the size of irrigated grass areas.
Because it is so important to limit outdoor water usage, there are plenty of alternative lawn options to consider for your commercial landscape, including:
- Native ground cover plants
- Gravel
- Mulch
- Hardscapes (walkways, patios, etc.)
- Artificial turf
Implement Smart Irrigation Technology
Your property’s watering needs can be significantly reduced by using native plants and grass substitutes, but even so, your plants will still need some water, particularly on hot summer days. There are two key ways to optimize your irrigation use: proper zoning and using “smart sprinklers” to minimize water usage.
In order to properly zone your property’s irrigation system, you need to have a good sense of the overall layout of your property. Identifying all of the slopes, low spots, and areas that receive varying amounts of daytime sunshine will help you decide how best to lay out your sprinkler zones. You can further optimize your zones by placing plants with similar watering needs together in the same zone.
After setting your zones, implementing smart sprinkler technology will help get the maximum efficiency out of your irrigation system. Smart sprinklers can monitor soil moisture, track rainfall, and monitor weather in real time to adjust water usage on the fly. They can even send alerts about leaks or other issues and shut off the system to cut down on water waste.
Take Advantage of Functional Plant Choices
Plants, trees, and shrubs serve more than just aesthetic purposes in landscape design. Consider how plants can make your landscape more comfortable for people and other plants from a design perspective. Trees can provide shade for walkways, seating areas, and other plants that don’t thrive in full sunlight. Shrubs can be used to separate areas of the property and also function as noise and wind barriers. This is especially helpful in the winter, as they can divert cold winds away from the building, walkways, etc. Plants can also help create a more lively atmosphere in the winter by attracting birds and other wildlife.
Develop a Smart Landscape Design Plan
After considering all of these aspects of your landscape, now is the time to combine these ideas into a cohesive landscape design. Keeping these things in mind from the beginning will help you make smart design choices and stay focused on reducing maintenance and watering needs. Working with a professional commercial landscape company is another way to ensure that your landscape improvements will help you stay as maintenance-free as possible.
Want to Create a Low-Maintenance Commercial Landscape?
GroundMasters Landscape Services is Here for All Your Commercial Landscaping Needs
With close to 30 years of experience, our commercial landscape design team can help you design a low-maintenance commercial property so that you can focus on what’s important to you. We also offer year-round commercial landscape services to fully take the burden of landscape care off your shoulders.
To see what GroundMasters can do for your Denver area business or commercial property, give us a call today at (303) 750-8867 or get in touch with us online to get started.