A Roundtable Discussion Amongst Landscapers

As spring has sprung, landscapers worldwide are talking amongst one another, trying to stake claim on what the best landscape practices are.

Perennials or Shrubs for Landscaping?

This question is often asked by customers to our landscape designers. The next question we ask is, how much maintenance work do you want to do or hire someone for? Typical landscape shrubs require pruning and extensive watering in their first couple years as a planted specimen. Whereas perennials require frequent watering during their early years but only require pruning when cutting the wilted growth back once – either during the fall after the first frost or in the spring before it begins growing again.

Paver Patios – Permeable or Traditional?

Water conservation is a prevalent topic in today’s current events, another question landscape designers receive is whether customers should have a traditional paver patio/walkway or permeable paver patio/walkway constructed at their home. The biggest difference between the two paver patio structure types are the cost and water run off. The big advantage of having a permeable paver patio is that the water is filtered through the hardscape’s base before going back into the ground.

With a traditional patio, all water runs off the patio and down the street to the storm drain, this can take contaminants such as oil, fertilizer, or gasoline and continue polluting our freshwater sources. If you can afford the increased cost of a permeable paver driveway, walkway, or patio, it’s the preferred choice for many to preserve our ever important freshwater sources.

Things to Consider With Your Landscaping Design

When you have a landscaping project designed for your home, there are a lot of factors that come into play. Here are Pat, owner of alwaysgreenerlawnpa.com‘s top five tips for hiring the best landscape designer to ensure your project is created exactly how you’d like:

  •     How will your outdoor space be used?
  •     How large of an area will your project cover?
  •     Where on the property will the landscaping be?
  •     Is there a swimming pool to be constructed in the future?
  •     Do you want to have a fire place or landscaping shade structure such as a pergola?

The list is longer but those are the basics you must have narrowed down before the project is executed.

5 Reasons To Hire A Landscaper For Your Outdoor Work

Today’s roundtable discussion – we all hate it, unless you are some freak of nature that enjoys sweating all summer and shivering, then sweating while shoveling in the winter. There is a reason contractors that offer lawn care, landscaping, and snow plowing services, because they know people hate the work.

The Five Reasons To Hire A Landscaper

    1. Avoiding Hard Labor – is that even a question to ask yourself? Why on Earth would someone spend their own money on the products like mulch, rock or brick pavers or blocks for a retaining wall to THEN have to do the backbreaking work of laying it down the proper way. No thanks, pass.
    2. Boosts Your Home Value – if you are building the landscape on your own, there is a high chance it will not look that great, which will NOT boost your property’s value. “When you hire a proper landscape contractor, homeowners can be rest assured that when the project is completed properly, their home’s value will increase when it comes time to sell”, Pat, the founder of https://www.alwaysgreenerlawnpa.com says, a regional landscape contracting company specializing in residential landscape construction, lawn maintenance and commercial snow plowing.
    3. Makes Your Family Happy – this goes without saying. Mom and dad are no fun if they are stuck out in the back yard slaving away shoveling rock. And while it may sound like fun and games having junior and sister “helping out”, their production is quite slow and then the entire family is just slaving away in the heat and humidity, still not sure where people would find the fun in that.
    4. Lowering Your Energy Bills – cheaper electric bills? Sounds good to me! Here is how this works. When you plant large deciduous shrubs or trees on the south side of your house, as they grow, during the summer the leaves essentially block the hot summer sunlight from heating up the outside surface of your house. If the hot rays of sun do not get the chance of heating up the siding, that is less work the air conditioning unit has to do, and the less work it does, the less of an electric bill you will rack up.
    5. Quality and Experience Do Not Cost, They Pay – experience and quality service may have an increased “cost” perception, but that is only to the uneducated. The cost of a new landscape to be designed and built for $20,000 may seem like a lot but guess what that buys: a designer that is local to the area (if you just moved to your home from another location this is crucial) who knows the plants that will work in the exact spots based on the sunlight they receive, winter winds, and more. Then a full scale construction crew to build everything with heavy equipment, this can not possibly be done with you, the wife and a wheel barrow. A professional lawn and landscape contractor will have the man power to get the tasks done, in a timely manner which allows you to get your yard back to its restorative state, allowing you to enjoy your outdoor space.

Stay tuned for the next one, as we may try to decipher why one would want to take on a landscape project of their own, if the answers are actually true.

What Does It Take To Walk All Day Outside?

Imagine being in a position that every day you must walk outside, all day long. Well this is the case for most lawn care and landscape professional service providers. These guys are in the trenches day in and day out, and by trenches – that’s literal trenches. For days when a retaining wall is being constructed, they are literally digging a trench to put the base material into. Then compacting it down before laying a base course. Talk about tough work!

Where The Magic Happens For Landscapers

Depending on the size of the company, even an owner of a landscape construction firm is out there getting dirty day to day. Talk about tough, tough work to then manage all the quotes, estimates, meetings and more after spending 12 hours in the field.

But the magic really begins once the owner’s able to delegate the tasks out to his crews, allowing the owner to move away from the tedious, robotic like tasks such as planting trees, cutting grass and shoveling snow. Pat, the owner of alwaysgreenerlawnpa.com has just begun that process of getting away from the manual labor, now the task begins of hiring out the redundant tasks such as paperwork, proposal prep, and more. The reason these are redundant is because an owner’s vision is what drives the company forward to continue growth.

If they’re stuck with the tasks that can be automated, growth is immediately halted, and that’s no good. 

The No-Fly Zone

An area you don’t want to ever be is the landscape business owner that’s been at it for twenty or more years yet is still the guy shoveling on job sites. For some reason people “show merit” in a position like that. Likely because most people just work their lame jobs 8am to 6pm, Monday through Friday until they die and their life is merely nothing close to fulfilling beyond getting drunk on weekends.

But for the serious entrepreneurs, there’s no better way to seal your fate in having no exit plan of your business to truly be able to enjoy that life that many wannabe entrepreneurs quote of “living your life how most won’t, to enjoy life how most can’t”.  Less than one percent of entrepreneurs even get to be able to reach this level despite their mental masturbation they get on Instagram motivational page. They fail to do the actual work of working on one’s business and building systems and structures in place so they can grow to then sell the business for millions and retire far earlier than their 8-5 working counterparts and friends. 

Addicted To Working On Your House?

Being as Thanksgiving has now just passed, many often turn into couch potatoes through the next month until shortly after the new year begins. Often telling stories of folk lore and other merry cheer. However, for a select group of individuals, they’ve had it with working on their house after a long year’s campaign of ever continuing projects. They no longer want anything to do with having to cut the grass, paint the siding, build a fence, or anything of the sort. Shoveling snow is also the last of their priorities as well.

This can be a dangerous path that one can take because the addictive nature of do it yourself projects can tear apart even the brightest of men. These folks like this must be aware of their issues and surge forward.

The Simple Solution To Enjoying Life Outside of DIY

One that’s addicted to working on their home obsessively are looked at as outcasts and are always looking to the next project instead of enjoying time with their family and friends. Although there’s something to be said about having to endure the not so friendly or enjoyable relatives but regardless the point remains, if you’re not living your best life and enjoying life to the fullest, whether you get enjoyment out of being a eyes on the prize type of worker with no disregard for anything but getting the job done.

For some who have a Bill Belichick type of mindset (he’s an NFL coach who never smiles even when they’re winning championships – talk about a boots in the ground type of worker) relinquishing control can be tough but it’s the toughest things that make us stronger later on.

So sometimes biting the bullet and hiring the best landscaping service in your area to cut the grass and build the patio, or a roofer to repair the roof, a plumber to repair the leaking pipes, and so on can be the best method to go with to restore sanity within the home.

Life Without Manual Labor Every Week

Let’s just lay out the facts right away. Doing manual labor sucks. Even if you know how to do the work on building a patio or block wall around the house or along a hill in the backyard. It’s back breaking and if the weather isn’t perfect, it’s a nightmare. Good luck on completing a patio if it’s raining. Especially if you have to work five days a week and have to spend your entire weekend doing the slave-like work of laying the foundational course of a retaining block wall.

Forget that, we can’t spend Monday through Friday doing something we hate, a.k.a. our job to then have to deal with living 100 lb rocks to build the wall all weekend long. It’s much more fun just drinking our faces off with alcohol and playing video games like Call of Duty World At War or PC games like World of Warcraft if the weather sucks while slamming a few cold ones with friends.

Finding Someone To Do The Wall Building

The only thing equally as challenging as building your wall or any other home project is locating a company or contractor that’s competent enough to get the job done right. You’re talking about a serious financial endeavor here so you have to make sure you choose the right guys for the job. Always be checking the reviews, as well as what their website says for the work they do, previous client testimonials, projects they’ve done, this company looks like a quality contractor in eastern Pennsylvania, https://www.alwaysgreenerlawnpa.com, they lay out their process for landscaping projects which is a big plus in my opinion because I’m able to know what exactly they’re going to do while they invade my property for a few days all the while I’m gone at work. So a win, win in my book.

This video explains the process of what a retaining wall project endures:

It sure beats the crap out of the idea of having to be outside in the hot or cold pounding away at the blocks to level them, then lift them and stack to then glue them all together. No thanks! I’ll pass. We all agree, that it’s worth it to just spend the money to have a professional do the work than it is to try to do it yourself and risk getting hurt or setting things up the wrong way and having something fall apart. You ever try to hang siding? Talk about a nightmare. But that’s a story for a whole different time. My take on spending weekends building something that can easily be hired to the right contractor, is to just fork over the funds to let the pros do it and focus your time on making more money. Whether it’s with video games and doing competition or starting a new business.

Folklore In The Home And Keeping Quality of Life – The Beginning

Welcome to our site! The goal here is to help our readers keep trucking on in life and “keep the peace” within their home, even after a disaster may have struck and a family’s devastated.  When something bad happens in the home, we often need a quick reminder to think back in time to when things were good or even think ahead to the future to what our lives can be like once this less than positive event subsides.

High Quality Homes

While we believe that having a nice home is important. This can have a high effect on overall mental health in today’s consuming driven world, what truly does matter is who’s inside that structure as opposed to the material items. A person’s well being rests on the other humanoid creatures (a.k.a. people) because socialization with other people is key to a happy and positive life.

That all said, if the overall quality of the house’s structural containments, the appliances, furniture are essentially junk and the place is dingy, quite frankly it’s tough for anyone to become truly happy in an environment like that. So to that we say, quality products plus quality services plus quality peoples equals a high quality of life, and thats our goal here. Giving you the information you need in order to live your best life.

The First Steps To Take

Creating a happy home can begin with something as simple as decorative items that can create the type of feeling you like. These can be things such as reclaimed wood on the wall behind the television set that’s hung on the wall above the fireplace, or granite counter tops in the kitchen combined with light hardwood cabinets and brand new black or stainless appliances. When one is happy while making an extravagant meal, the mood in the room is just magnificent.

Another important step is to make sure the furniture not only looks good, but is comfortable. Because what good is the furniture if it is unpleasant to sit on?!

The next step to optimize the home is your sleeping quarters, also known as your bedroom. Right away, remove electronics such as televisions or computers from this room as it needs to be a sleep sanctuary. Then you’ll need some time of drapes or blinds that will black out all outside light. It needs to be pitch black for humans to get the sleep they need to remain healthy.

Those are the first steps to take, here are some more:

RSS
Follow by Email
YouTube
Pinterest
LinkedIn
Share
error: Content is protected !!