How to Evaluate and Upgrade Your Existing Landscape Maintenance Plan

If you’ve had a professional landscape maintenance plan in place for a while, you probably figure you’re all set.

Meanwhile, your plants have grown, your irrigation system is aging, and you may have added a flower bed or two.

Your landscape maintenance plan isn’t a one-time thing, says Scott Long, director of maintenance operations at Outback Landscape. Landscaping naturally evolves over time, Long says, and so do your landscape maintenance needs.

Jump to Section

• Property Inspections are Key to Great Maintenance
• Why You Might Need to Adjust Your Landscape Maintenance Plan
• What Should Be Included in a Landscape Maintenance Plan?
• How Do You Know if Your Current Landscape Maintenance Plan is Working?
• The Value of Frequent Professional Landscape Maintenance Visits
• FAQ About Professional Landscape Maintenance
• Need Expert Professional Landscape Maintenance in Idaho? Trust Outback

When should you upgrade your landscape maintenance services? If you want better curb appeal. Your landscaping has changed. Your lawn is struggling. You notice more weeds.

Long has some advice about maintenance plans and landscape maintenance in Idaho Falls.

Property Inspections are Key to Great Maintenance

When Long visits a property, whether it’s a first-time visit or a regular client, he considers many factors to determine the maintenance needs.

“I have a mental checklist I go through when I visit a property,” he says. “How mature are the plants? Are they aging? They might need pruning more than once a year.

“How old is the irrigation system?” he says. “Does anything need adjusting? Water pressure can change as new developments go in.

“Is the weed control still working? Or are weeds more difficult to control?

“I look down at the condition of the lawn,” Long says. “Is there an area the irrigation isn’t hitting? I check the planting beds. Maybe the bark mulch is worn, or the black rock has been there so long it’s faded, and now it’s gray.”

He has questions for the homeowner, too.

“Do things look the way you want them to?” he asks. “What are your priorities? Maybe the planting beds look dull and need more color. Maybe you’d like better curb appeal.”

It might be time for an updated plan of attack.

Why You Might Need to Adjust Your Landscape Maintenance Plan

There are several reasons you might need to adjust your landscape maintenance, Long says:

1. You Want Better Curb Appeal

Do you love how your front yard looks when you pull into the driveway? Or is it less than impressive?

“Shrubs shouldn’t be covering your windows,” Long says. You might need to add pruning services.

“Maybe there’s not enough color in the beds, and things look dull,” he says. “We can recommend perennials that come back year after year and add a lot of color.

“Homeowners often don’t know what they want — they just want it to look nice,” he says. “They don’t know there’s a shrub that will get beautiful yellow or red leaves in the fall and flowers in the spring.”

That’s where he comes in, with great ideas to boost curb appeal with fresh plantings or plant health care to improve the plants you have.

2. Your Landscaping Has Changed

As your landscape’s trees and shrubs grow, they create more shade. Or maybe you removed a tree and now have more sun. Or you added planting beds.

Any changes to your landscaping might mean you need to tweak your landscape maintenance plan to accommodate them.

You might need extra tree pruning to thin tree branches so sunlight can reach the grass beneath. Or irrigation maintenance to adjust watering for more or less sun on your lawn.

3. Your Lawn Has Thin or Bare Spots

If you have pesky bare spots in your lawn that never fill in, you might need to add lawn aeration to your yard maintenance services.

You might have compacted soil that can’t breathe.

When your soil becomes compacted, your lawn’s roots can't take in water or nutrients, which weakens your turf.

Aeration and seeding can solve the problem. Lawn 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 created by aeration are perfect new homes for the grass seed.

Then that grass seed can grow and fill in the bare spots.

4. Is Your Home New or Older?

New homes have different professional landscape maintenance needs than homes in established neighborhoods, Long says.

“On new homes with fresh landscaping installation, I don’t recommend pruning for the first two years,” he says. “Plants need time to grow.”

Long says you don’t need weekly bed maintenance for new landscaping, either. Once a month is plenty.

But across town in an older neighborhood, landscaping has more needs, from mature trees to aging shrubs to beds stuffed with plants.

5. You Have an Irrigation System

If your Idaho Falls landscape maintenance plan doesn’t include irrigation maintenance, it should, Long says.

“Many homeowners don’t want to pay for it,” he says, but an irrigation audit is fairly inexpensive, at $150 to $200. “They’ll say, ‘That’s a lot to pay three times a year.’ Then they hope nothing goes wrong.’”

Hope isn’t a solid plan.

“Then they’ll call us and end up needing a repair that far exceeds the cost of the audit,” Long says. “If we caught the problem early at an irrigation audit, maybe leaky valves just needed cleaning. Now we’re replacing them, and the bill is 1,200 bucks.

“It’s cheaper to pay for an inspection than to pay for a repair.”

What Should Be Included in a Landscape Maintenance Plan?

The best Idaho Falls landscape maintenance plans cover your landscaping’s overall health, from mowing and lawn care to plant health care, spring and fall cleanups and irrigation maintenance.

Outback Landscape offers customized landscape maintenance that starts 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 from a full menu of maintenance services, including:

Turf Maintenance

Outback crews provide weekly mowing. Once you sign up for mowing, you can also choose spring and fall yard cleanups.

Lawn Aeration

Lawn aeration uses a machine to pull out plugs of soil, creating spaces for air and water to penetrate so your compacted lawn can breathe.

Lawn aeration also helps break down thatch — a common lawn problem in Idaho. It’s a layer of dead grass and stems that sits between the grass blades and the soil and blocks beneficial air, water and fertilizer.

You can aerate in the spring or fall.

Irrigation Management

This includes spring activation, winter shutdown and seasonal audits where irrigation technicians adjust your irrigation schedule as needed and check the entire system to make sure it’s working properly.

Planting Bed Maintenance

Crews apply pre-emergent and post-emergent weed control. Weekly bed maintenance is available that includes pulling weeds and dead-heading plants.

Tree & Shrub Plant Health Care

A variety of services target plant and tree health, from systemic tree injections to deep-root fertilization to dormant oil treatments.

Perimeter Pest Control

This exterior pest control spray is applied around the base of your home to deter insects.

How Do You Know if Your Current Landscape Maintenance Plan is Working?

Look around out there. Here’s what you should see:

Your Grass is Green

A healthy lawn looks dark green, not pale, yellow or brown.

Your lawn care plan should be providing everything your turf needs to achieve a healthy green hue.

Quality fertilizer with some slow-release nitrogen and 3-7 percent iron to encourage darker green grass.

Extra sulfur. Idaho Falls lawns need sulfur because of our soil and water pH. Since we have a higher pH, we lower it by applying sulfur as part of our lawn treatments.

Few Weeds

If your Idaho Falls landscape maintenance plan is working, it controls weeds with well-timed treatments, including pre-emergent herbicides in early spring to prevent weeds from germinating, post-emergent broadleaf applications to target dandelions and clover, and spot treatments when pesky intruders sneak in.

No Bugs Munching Your Lawn or Plants

Hungry insects can ruin landscaping fast. If your landscape maintenance plan is working, you won’t have billbugs or grubs devouring your lawn or aphids destroying your plants or trees.

It takes skilled and knowledgeable lawn and plant care techs who know what insects are out there and what insecticide it takes to prevent them in the first place or give them the boot if they show up.

Your Planting Beds Are Tidy

If your landscape maintenance plan is working, you shouldn’t see dead plants, weeds, or bare spots in your mulch. Beds should be tidy, flowers deadheaded, mulch fresh, and beds edged.

“The trick is staying on top of it,” Long says. “Deadheading is important if you want more blooms. Weeds grow faster than plants. We can spend one hour a week on weeds or 10-12 hours a month if you let things go. A homeowner will call us and say, ‘My weeds are out of control; can you come out?

“You save money by being proactive instead of reactive.”

The Value of Frequent Professional Landscape Maintenance Visits

When Outback professional landscape maintenance crews visit your property every week for mowing, trimming and edging, they notice any problems early, Long says.

Are insects munching your aspens? Are there signs of grubs in your lawn? Is a shrub looking pale?

“I evaluate the plant life, the condition of the lawn, the condition of bark

mulch or rock,” Long says. “We’ll notice that a shrub died over the winter. Or that salt killed a portion of the lawn. Or if the city plow bumped a couple of irrigation heads.

“We catch problems early,” Long says. “Our crews are really great at spotting issues. We do a training once a month on lawn diseases, tree issues, plant problems. We spend a lot of time on training, so they know exactly what to look for.”

Spotting issues early is especially important with irrigation, Long says.

“It gets hot here in the summer,” he says. “If a week goes by and a plant isn’t getting watered because a sprayer is clogged or an emitter is blocked, it will die within a week. Suddenly you’re paying $300 or $400 to replace plant material.”

FAQ About Professional Landscape Maintenance

Q: How often should professional landscape maintenance be performed?

A: Residential properties in Idaho Falls need professional landscape maintenance weekly during the main growing season, and monthly or as needed during the off season.

Q: How much do yard maintenance services cost?

A: Prices 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 and includes a choice of two other services. The plan starts at $500 a month based on a 7,000 square foot lawn.

Q: Is professional landscape maintenance worth the cost?

A: Yes, for a few reasons:

• Professionals catch early signs of pest infestations, turf diseases, or bad drainage before they turn into expensive yard repairs.
• You don’t have to buy lawn care products or equipment, which saves money (and space in your garage.)
• Your time is valuable, right? When pros handle your landscape maintenance you get several hours back every week you can use for more fun pursuits.
• Professional landscape maintenance boosts your curb appeal, which adds to the value of your home.

Need Expert Professional Landscape Maintenance in Idaho? Trust Outback

Take a stroll around your property with Long, and you’ll get a sense of his landscape maintenance checklist and see your landscaping through his eagle eye.

Here’s his bottom line: “We want your yard to look as good as it possibly can,” Long says.

Outback Landscape offers full-service landscape maintenance in Idaho Falls, offering 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. Call us at 208-656-3220 or schedule a no-obligation meeting with a member of our team.