You know a good landscape maintenance program cleans up your leaves, keeps your lawn healthy and impresses your neighbor when he walks past with his dog.
But there’s more.
“Landscape maintenance protects the value of your home,” says Scott Long, director of maintenance operations at Outback Landscape.
How does landscape maintenance protect your home value? Thriving lawns, neat garden beds and healthy, mature trees create a strong first impression for potential buyers. Professional pruning removes dead or hazardous branches before they can tumble down and damage your roof or siding. Regular skilled attention to your landscaping keeps plants healthy and thriving so you don’t have to pay for costly replacements.
It does. Long sees it firsthand, all the time.
“We just did a job for new owners of a home in Sugar City,” he says. “They bought it from an elderly gentleman who hadn’t been keeping up with the landscape maintenance.
“The new homeowners spent $30,000 for us to tear out all the dying and overgrown plants and replace them,” he says. “It looks really nice now. It made a huge difference in the overall value of the home.
“But the seller sold the house for less than he could have because the landscaping was so neglected,” Long says. “He could have asked a lot more for the house.”
You probably spent a lot of money on your landscaping, Long says.
“Professional maintenance protects your investment,” he says. “People spend 10 to 20 percent of the cost of their home on landscaping. That means you can have $50,000 or more invested in your landscaping. You want to protect that investment by keeping things healthy and happy.”
Regular skilled pruning is one great example, he says.
“You don’t want to have to replace trees and shrubs,” Long says. “If they’re pruned properly, they stay at the appropriate size and don’t outgrow their space.”
“We get so much wind here, a falling branch can damage your roof,” Long says. Regular landscape maintenance means crews are always on the lookout for dead and dying branches and trim them before they fall.
Proper pruning keeps trees healthy, so branches stay strong, he says.
Impressive curb appeal matters, Long says, and professional landscape maintenance is one of the main ways to get it.
Landscape bed maintenance is one of Long’s top curb appeal ideas.
How are your flowers and plants supposed to wow anybody when they’re surrounded by weeds, dead flowers, ratty old mulch, and decomposing leaves?
Outback landscape maintenance crews keep them looking great with regular visits.
“A big thing here in Idaho is protecting landscaping through the winter,” Long says. “We get pretty harsh temperatures.”
What’s on his winter landscape maintenance list to help protect home value? Winterizing irrigation is number one.
“This is a really big one,” Long says.
Leaving water in your irrigation system during the colder months can cause pipes to burst and lead to other costly damage, too, he says.
“Here in our area we have backflow preventers connected to the main waterline,” Long says. “If they’re not protected in winter, they can crack and cause leaks that will damage your basement”
“We see that happen here quite often in irrigation systems that don’t get winterized,” he says. “Freezing temperatures can cause breaks in the line you won’t realize. About 10 to 15 percent of our customers leave for the winter, which means their homes are unoccupied and not maintained.”
Proper winterization before you head out for the winter means you can rest easy in the sun.
“Winterizing” your system means removing any remaining water from the last time it ran. People often call it “irrigation blowouts.”
Outback crews will turn off the water supply, drain all water from the pipes and sprinkler heads, and turn off the controller for the winter.
The reason it’s often called a sprinkler system “blowout” is because compressed air is used to "blow out" the system to remove any lingering water.
“We do an irrigation audit, too, before we blow out irrigation systems in fall,” Long says, “to make sure nothing has broken that could lead to a more costly problem in the spring.”
These routine irrigation audits protect your property year-round, Long says.
A simple problem can lead to huge expenses, he says.
“If a valve is stuck open, it can flood your basement,” Long says.
“We had a situation where one home’s irrigation system actually flooded their neighbor’s basement due to the home’s grading. It was all because of a stuck valve. That’s a $3 part.
“Most people are oblivious to what’s going on underground,” he says. Regular irrigation inspections keep your property safe.
They absolutely do, Long says, so it’s important to protect them.
“You can’t just put them in the ground and leave them alone,” he says.
His pro tips?
“Fertilizing is key,” Long says. Fertilizer boosts your trees' health and appearance, from strong roots to glossy leaves to plentiful, pretty flowers.
“People often don’t want to spend the money,” Long says.
“But if you suddenly have to replace a 30-year-old tree, you’re talking tens of thousands of dollars if you want one the same size.”
Or replace it with a less expensive sapling and lose property value, he says.
Plan to fertilize in early spring and again in fall.
Sometimes your trees need an extra fertilizer boost.
Deep-root tree fertilization injects nutrients directly into the soil instead of spreading them on top.
By injecting fertilizer under high pressure, the nutrients can reach the deepest roots fast, feeding your tree from the roots up.
Long is happy to share why professional pruning helps protect your property value.
Here are a few highlights:
The same goes for shrubs.
“If your shrubs get too overgrown, you get to a point where you need to start over and replace them,” Long says. “If you wait too long, then have to cut a shrub back too much, you can kill the plant — or it will look terrible.”
What happens if you skip a season of maintenance? Just ask your lawn. Better yet, ask Long.
“A lawn’s biggest problem is weeds taking over,” Long says. “And it doesn’t take long. If you go a year without fertilizer and weed control, that will wreck your lawn.
“You spend a lot of time and money to make your lawn look good,” he says. “Then all you have to do is neglect it between March and May and weeds can take over.”
Long recommends a regular professional fertilization program that includes weed control, a super-important duo that keeps your lawn well-fed and reduces weeds with perfectly timed seasonal treatments.
Long suggests focusing on a few key curb appeal ideas: Bed maintenance, seasonal pruning and a lawn health boost.
Outback crews can tidy beds, removing weeds and deadheading plants. Fresh mulch automatically boosts curb appeal.
Pruning trees and shrubs tidies them up and keeps them at a healthy and appealing size.
Lawn aeration rejuvenates a struggling lawn and preps it for re-seeding.
Aeration uses a machine to pull out plugs of soil, creating spaces that let air and water penetrate and support healthier roots.
Aeration is typically followed by overseeding, as the holes it creates are perfect new homes for grass seed.
Then, watch your struggling lawn improve, boosting your property value.
The best Idaho Falls landscape maintenance plans cover your landscaping’s total health, from mowing and lawn care to plant health care, spring and fall cleanups and irrigation maintenance.
Outback Landscape offers customized landscape maintenance, starting with our Complete Lawn Care Program.
All our professional landscape maintenance customers start with the Complete Lawn Care Program, which covers fertilizer, weed control and grub control.
Then, customers can build on that with a full menu of maintenance services, including turf maintenance: lawn aeration; irrigation management; planting bed maintenance; plant health care; and perimeter pest control.
How much does landscape maintenance cost?
Landscape maintenance costs vary, but Outback Landscape offers a plan called Total Maintenance that starts with a complete lawn care program of fertilizer, weed control and grub control, plus a choice of two other services. The plan starts at $500 a month for a 7,000-square-foot lawn.
It definitely is, Long says.
“It costs considerably less to maintain landscaping than to replace it,” he says.
“This is a conversation I have with about 50 percent of my customers who say they don’t want some services,” he says. “You can pay around $200 to have us come and maintain your planting beds or you can pay $10,000 if you end up needing to replace everything.”
“That goes for every aspect of your landscape,” he says. “No matter what the landscaping problem is, there’s almost always a preventive solution that costs much less.”
Long and his team of landscape pros see every day how neglected landscaping can make a home's value plummet.
They’d love to help you boost yours.
Outback Landscape offers full-service landscape design, installation and maintenance throughout Southeast Idaho and Wyoming.
We install beautiful, functional landscapes. But our work doesn’t stop there. We’ll stay with you for the long haul, caring for your property through all four seasons.
We serve residential and commercial properties in Idaho Falls, Rexburg and Pocatello, Idaho, as well as Bonneville, Madison and Bannock counties and Jackson Hole, WY. Ready to protect your property value with skilled professional landscape maintenance? Call us at 208-656-3220 or schedule a no-obligation meeting with a member of our team.