By Jeremiah Sandler
Arms of the industry
Nature is absolutely full of complex systems. Entire professional fields have developed through examining and understanding these systems. There are several professional fields that come together to ultimately form the landscaping industry. Each of these fields address a specific system, and how it relates to other systems.
Ever notice the mowers and plant healthcare technicians are almost always from different companies? The typical property, residential or commercial, will have a tree company, a healthcare company, a mowing company, and a landscape company, a sprinkler company, all working simultaneously throughout the year on the property. Each arm addresses their particular field within your landscape. With several different arms needing to work together, subpar results are achieved because of a single thing: Lack of communication.
Landscape companies will contract with other companies. For instance, a landscape company can hire a mowing company to do all of the mowing for them on the properties they manage. In other setups, every service can be fulfilled by a single company (kind of like the Wal-mart of landscaping). Regardless of how the company offers its services, communication between each arm will yield the best results.
Ideal communication examples
The plant healthcare technicians fertilizing the lawn can often times find problems caused by inappropriate mowing habits. In an ideal situation, should the technician find a disease associated with grass blades being cut too short, he or she simply informs the mowers to raise the mower on that specific property, which will cut the grass to a longer height. This gets rid of the disease without resorting to any fungicide. Keeping all unneeded chemicals out of your environment.
A very common and unfortunate example observed is the piling of construction materials on the root zone of trees. If a hole must be dug, the soil has to go somewhere, right? Just put it over there. Lots of people have done this. A seemingly mundane action can have very dire consequences to trees if left unchecked (compaction, grade change, etc.). The inclusion of an arborist during the construction phase will minimize damage to the trees on a property. It is easier to prevent tree damage than to fix it.
People and companies understandably get busy, and that is especially true in the landscape industry come spring time. It’s easy to get forget to contact one another or simply not want to jump through the many possible hoops. But there is a way.
How to achieve Integration
One aspect of your landscaping can adversely affect another. But the opposite is also true, in that one aspect of your landscaping can improve another. Communication between crews working on the same property will ensure crews never compromise each other’s work, in order to maximize professional results. Properties maintained to the highest and healthiest level because the arms working on your property are integrated.
In any phase of landscaping or planting or construction, whomever is managing the entire operation should organize meetings and synchronize all of the arms. It may not be entirely obvious who is facilitating the entire operation. In such a case you, the homeowner, should assume the responsibility if you are to ensure the success of whatever the landscape goals are. Call each company and arrange for representatives to all meet at the property with you. They’d be more than happy to oblige because they want their work to be successful too.
Companies in each arm of the landscaping industry prefer to work with proactive homeowners. Forming a good relationship will elicit both responsibility and a genuine desire to work on your property. And that’s what everyone wants.