Landscaping
Keeping a built landscape from quietly undoing itself
Spring and fall cleanups, mulch, pruning and bed care — keeping a built landscape from quietly undoing itself.
The problem
The property looks after itself for about two years after it is built, and then it does not — and you would rather not spend every Saturday on it.
Most of what maintenance actually protects is the hardscape, not the plants. Beds that creep over a patio edge trap moisture against it. Leaves left in a channel drain over winter mean a blocked drain in the spring thaw. Mulch piled against a foundation or a wall keeps it wet through every freeze. None of these is urgent in any given month and all of them shorten the life of the thing underneath.
Two things worth saying plainly, because both are done wrong on most properties around here. Mulch goes down two to three inches deep and never against a trunk — the volcano of mulch piled around a tree base holds moisture against the bark and rots it, and it is the most common self-inflicted tree injury in suburban New York. And pruning has a calendar: spring-flowering shrubs set their buds the previous summer, so cutting them back in March removes the flowers you were waiting for.
A fall cleanup here is doing a specific job, not tidying. Leaf litter left over turf mats down under snow and smothers it; leaf litter left in beds is free organic matter. The distinction is worth making rather than blowing everything to the curb.
What the work includes
- Spring cleanups and bed preparation
- Fall cleanups and leaf management
- Mulch installation at correct depth
- Shrub and ornamental pruning on the right calendar
- Bed edging and weed management
- Drain, catch basin and channel clearing before winter
- Full-season property maintenance programmes
What you end up with
A property that still looks the way it did the year it was built, and hardscape that is not being quietly damaged by what grows next to it.
How long it takes
Cleanups are a single visit, scheduled in windows: April into early May for spring, and late October into November for fall. Full-season programmes run on a route with a set frequency agreed at the start.
Seasonal Property Maintenance we've built
Photographs from our own jobs.
Where we do seasonal property maintenance
Across Putnam and northern Westchester County. The ground is not the same in all four of these towns and it changes how this work gets built — each page says what changes there.
Usually goes with
These three come up on the same properties often enough that it is worth pricing them together rather than twice.
Get a seasonal property maintenance estimate
Tell us what you are trying to do and we will come and look at it. Free written estimates, no obligation.