Category: Landscaping

Green Landscaping Best Practices

Green landscaping is more than selecting the plants that are the most aesthetically pleasing. It’s about choosing the right plants along with the most efficient use of water and resources to sustain your lawn. The closer it resembles the natural biosphere, the more it will take care of itself.

Sound like something you might be interested in tackling? Below are some helpful and easy practices for your next green landscaping project.

The Right Lawn

Choose the grass best suited to your local climate and conditions. Make sure to do your homework. Native flora is your best bet, as it’s already adapted to live in your environment and will require minimal upkeep.

The Right Dirt

Healthy plants need healthy environs, so make sure your soil has the right balance of nutrients.

Prevent Runoff

Landscaping layout is also very important to the health of your lawn. Make sure to utilize natural light, provide drainage, and take advantage of rainfall where possible.

Materials

For a truly green landscape, you need to use the right materials:

  • Use recycled materials
  • Design lighting prudently to decrease energy use
  • Use solar power
  • Reduce ambient light pollution
  • Choose and greener equipment that uses more sustainable fuel sources
  • Use organic pest management solutions
  • Avoid pesticides prohibited by environmental groups

Self-regulating System

The more you acclimate your lawn to the existing environment, the easier it will be to maintain. The best lawns are self-regulating, because they use the existing structures and soil to take care of themselves. Which means a beautiful lawn and a lot less work for you!

Tips for Proper Grounds Care

Year-round, climate presents increasingly difficult challenges to facilities and their managers. Getting and keeping properties in immaculate condition is key for a company’s image, and can also be a health and safety benefit to a workforce. Below are some tips for proper grounds care.

Aerate

Aeration, making tiny holes in the lawn of your facility’s grounds, allows water to soak in, stimulating root growth and improving fertilizer absorption. When you aerate a lawn, it soaks up more water, which prevents runoff. Aeration improves the effectiveness of irrigation and protects your grounds from dead plant build-up that can collect between the grass blades and the soil. This will keep your facility’s grounds looking great season after season, year after year.

Watering

For trees and shrubs, ensure you thoroughly soak every 2 days in hot weather and every 4 days in cool weather.

Hire a Groundskeeper

This won’t be a viable choice for every business, but depending on your facility’s size and needs it might be a great idea to hire a groundskeeping service to take care of these issues for you. Some things to consider before hiring a groundskeeper or service:

  • Make sure you’ve carefully vetted your service provider
  • Create an effective set of KPIs to track and measure quality
  • Communicate these KPIs to your service provider and conduct fixed review meetings to discuss and fix issues
  • Make sure that your KPIs directly relate to your business goals
  • Encourage innovation and the use of developing technologies to support strategic grounds care
  • Check for upcoming needs six months ahead of time, and prioritize tasks in order of importance and urgency

If you want to know more about proper grounds maintenance, contact MaintenX today!

How to Utilize Plants in your Office Space

Adding plants to the office can create a welcoming atmosphere in the workplace. But aesthetics aren’t the only reason to bring more greenery to your office. Here are just a few of the benefits of adding plants to your work environment:

More Comfortable Spaces

The suggested humidity for optimal health and comfort is about 30-60 percent, but a lot of work environments don’t even come close to these numbers. Low humidity in the workplace can increase tiredness and cause respiratory problems, leading to a substantial drop in office morale. What to do about this problem? Add some plants! There are many types of plants suitable for office environments. And the added greenery will increase humidity, increase oxygen levels, and boost morale by improving the look and feel of your workplace.

Plants Good For The Office:

Not all plants are good options for the office. Consider things like the amount of natural light provided throughout the day, how often they require watering, and how often they may need to be repotted. Here are a few great options for indoor spaces:

Orchids 

There is some evidence that orchids offer stress relief because of the soothing smells they produce—and if not, they still smell great! Orchids also naturally reduce toxins in the air. They can, however, be a bit tricky to keep healthy. Make sure your office fits the light, humidity, and temperature requirements for orchids to thrive.

English Ivy

English Ivy plants can help in stuffy offices with bad ventilation. They also have a curious knack for removing ammoniac and other odors from the air. You might be able to think of the perfect room for this plant!

Pothos

Pothos, or Devil’s Ivy, is a useful, no-fuss option for the office. Easy to care for, inexpensive, and low-light tolerant, it’s great for beginners. If you want something a little understated, the soft, heart-shaped leaves of the Pothos may just fit the bill.

Whatever plants you choose for your office, as long as you maintain them you’re sure to see benefits to both morale and air quality!

What Services are offered at MaintenX?

Facility Maintenance

MaintenX is a full-service Facility Maintenance company serving 14 states across America, including major restaurants and Fortune 500 companies.

With just a call or click, we can take on a project, schedule preventative maintenance, or jump into action on an emergency service call in many locations in the U.S.

We offer 24/7 professional Facility Maintenance service and repair, including:

– Air conditioning

– Refrigeration

– Plumbing

– Electrical Work

– Roofing Repair

– Backflow Programs

– General Contractor Needs

– Rapid Disaster Response

– Preventative Maintenance

– Floor Maintenance

– Snow Removal

– Landscaping

– Dark Closed Stores

– Property Management and Maintenance

– Extensive Self-Performing Facility Maintenance & Repair

MaintenX is one of the largest Facility Maintenance service companies in the U.S. We are always expanding our service area.

Our extensive system of more than forty-five thousand contractors lets us to provide quality Facility Maintenance work throughout the United States. To maintain the standards for our self-performing technicians, contractor selection is not based simply on price, but also quality, experience, consistency, dependability, and service history, coupled with proper preparation and certification.

Green Power Incentives

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 and other federal laws have provided tax incentives for certain energy management projects that exceed the minimum energy consumption benchmarks. Certain utilities companies and state energy offices also have demand-side management rebates and low interest loans to help foster sustainability and energy conservation projects. At MaintenX, we encourage you to look into these Green incentives, as they could be used towards your next project.

Landscaping Tips for Fall Weather

In fall, many parts of the country enjoy more temperate weather and beautiful colors on plant life. This natural array doesn’t mean landscaping maintenance stops for your business, however. In fact, fall is the time for forward-looking landscaping to prepare your lawn and storefront for the upcoming winter.

With winter frost approaching, it is important to protect your plants from the impending chill. Leaves may wither and drop, but it’s the roots that need to survive. One way to keep them warm is to spread mulch around the area; usually a layer of two or three inches will suffice. Wrapping smaller plants and shrubbery is also a good idea, as is surrounding them with shredded leaves or burlap.

While fall isn’t typically the time to prune, it is still a good idea to clear away dead and dying plants to give the healthier ones a greater chance of surviving the next season. If you are considering adding new plants to your landscape, only do so if they’ll have time to establish themselves before the cold hits. Most nurseries have fall sales to get rid of stock before the winter, so you may have the opportunity to score a major deal.

Landscaping in the fall requires a certain finesse and skill, but it’s certainly worth it to keep your business front looking sharp. If you require assistance, we at MaintenX are always at the ready to assist you in all your landscaping needs.