A beautiful landscape creates an inviting atmosphere and great curb appeal for your Northern NJ home. A lush, green lawn, colorful flowers, interesting plants and ornamental trees and shrubs will add year-round natural beauty that enhances the character and architectural style of your home.
With proper landscape design and maintenance, you can create a gorgeous landscape that your family will enjoy and your neighbors will envy. With a little planning and help from a professional landscape company in Bergen County, you can enjoy a thriving, green landscape where you’ll love spending time outdoors with friends and family. Here are some helpful tips and ways to create a beautiful, healthy landscape.
Landscape Maintenance Services
A healthy, green landscape requires year-round care and maintenance to stay well-maintained and prevent problems with diseases and outdoor pests. Professional landscape care will ensure that your landscape design and maintenance receives expert attention and quality services.
Regular Landscape Maintenance
The first and most important step to a beautiful landscape is regular care and maintenance. It will keep your landscape well-maintained and healthy throughout the year. When you hire a reputable, Bergen County landscape company, you can expect expert care and top-quality services. A professional, experienced crew will be assigned to your home to take care of all of your landscaping needs as scheduled per your contract agreement. A professional landscape company provides regular landscape maintenance services that typically include:
- Weekly lawn mowing
- Weeding
- Border edging for driveways, walkways and patio areas
- Cleaning of driveways, walkways and patio areas
- Spring yard cleanup to remove dead winter growth and debris
- Fall yard cleanup to remove summer debris and prepare for winter
Regular care and maintenance is essential to a green, healthy lawn and landscape. Without it, your property can become quickly overgrown and full of unsightly weeds. An ill-maintained landscape not only creates an eyesore for your home and neighborhood, it also creates an open invitation for all kinds of lawn diseases and outdoor insects and pests. Regular care and maintenance by a professional landscape company will create a healthy outdoor environment for your family and keep your home and property looking its best year-round.
Landscape and Garden Renovations
Professional landscape companies that provide landscape design and maintenance services can help you with landscape ideas that will give your home a fresh, new look. With landscape and garden renovations, professional, experienced crews can replant your damaged or worn lawn with new sod or seed that will instantly give your home a new appearance with great curb appeal. Skilled landscape crews can get rid of any plants, shrubs and trees that are damaged or dead and plant new varieties that will thrive year-round in your existing landscape. Expert garden designers can create beautiful annual and perennial gardens that fill your landscape with stunning colors and interesting textures. Landscape and garden renovations are a great way to add height, depth, texture and color to your landscape. Landscape and garden renovations can fill your landscape with beautiful foliage, colorful flowers and fragrant scents that create an inviting outdoor atmosphere. A professional landscape design and maintenance company can provide all types of renovations and beautiful garden designs based on your existing soil and property conditions, irrigation requirements and maintenance needs. With good design and proper planning, you can turn a plain, boring landscape into a stunning outdoor oasis that showcases your home.
Seasonal Planting and Pruning
There’s a wide variety of available grasses, plants, shrubs and trees for your Northern NJ landscape, so it’s important to plant the right varieties for your soil and landscape conditions. Choosing the wrong grass seed or sod, or wrong variety of plants, shrubs and trees can result in poor growth, abundant weeds, plant diseases and outdoor insects and pests that can damage your landscape. Seasonal planting must be done at the right time of year, so plant requirements for proper growth are met. If you plant at the wrong time of year, you may waste lots of money on beautiful new plants that don’t survive. For seasonal planting in your yard or garden that will thrive, it’s best to hire a professional landscape company that’s knowledgeable about plant growth requirements such as soil and light conditions, irrigation needs, proper fertilizers and pest control.
Most pruning is done in Spring or early Fall after old blooms fade or before new blooms sprout. This maximizes flower production for the following year. Pruning in late Spring or early Fall makes it easier to examine the plant’s structure and make proper cuts. Although seasonal pruning may seem like a simple task, you can cause serious damage to your plants, shrubs and trees if you prune incorrectly or at the wrong time of year. It’s best to leave seasonal pruning to a landscape design and maintenance professional who understands plant growth requirements and proper pruning techniques.
Fertilizer
Your lawn, plants, shrubs and trees need fertilization for proper nutrients. Unfortunately, most soil conditions in Bergen County are not that healthy. They are dry and lack adequate amounts of important nutrients for healthy plant growth. Fertilization provides essential amounts of nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and iron to promote strong plant roots and healthy, green foliage growth. It also helps to fight against environmental stresses like extreme heat or cold, drought, regular foot traffic and constant lawn mowing. Choosing the right type of fertilizer and following proper fertilization schedules are essential for a healthy, thriving landscape. Using the wrong type of fertilizer or fertilizing at the wrong time of year can cause damage to your lawn, plants, shrubs and trees. Over-fertilizing can kill your grass and plants and under-fertilizing can cause poor growth patterns. Typical fertilization schedules usually include early Spring, late Spring, Summer, early Fall and late Fall. A landscape design and maintenance professional can choose the best type of fertilizer and proper fertilization schedules for your specific landscape needs.
Mulch
Mulching is a simple, inexpensive way to provide great landscape benefits. It provides a protective layer of material on top of the soil that creates numerous advantages for your plants, shrubs and trees. Mulching helps to: 1) retain soil moisture; 2) maintain even soil temperatures; 3) prevent soil erosion; 4) reduce soil compaction; and 5) prevent weed growth. Mulch is available in both organic and inorganic compounds that will benefit your landscape. Organic mulches like bark chips, straw and grass clippings decompose naturally and help to improve soil conditions by adding organic matter back into the soil. They also provide an organic source of nutrients and set up a healthy underground environment for beneficial earthworms and other healthy organisms that benefit plants. Although inorganic mulches like landscape fabrics don’t improve soil conditions, they do offer advantages in certain landscapes with steep slopes and soil erosion problems or landscapes with hard-to-water areas that need soil moisture retention. Mulching around flower gardens, shrubs and trees also gives a your landscape a neat, well-maintained appearance.
Weed and Pest Control
Weeds and outdoor insects and pests love to invade your landscape when warm weather arrives each Spring. Rich, fertile soil contributes to easy weed growth, and tender, new plant growth provides a convenient feeding ground for insects and pests. In the right conditions, aggressive weeds like dandelions, thatch, crabgrass, and foxtails can quickly take over your landscape before you even realize there’s a problem. Small, hard-to-see insects like aphids, mealybugs, caterpillars and beetles can invade your lawn, and underground pests that are hard to spot like grubs, wire worms, slugs and fire ants can invade your soil. Once this happens, it can be very difficult to get rid of them without the use of herbicides and pesticides. To prevent weed growth, your landscape design and maintenance plan should include a pre-emergent herbicide and proper pest control in early Spring. Before warm weather arrives, you should talk to a Bergen County landscape professional about proper weed control and an Integrated Pest Management Program (IPM) that focuses on organic pest control solutions.
Organic Lawn Care
Organic lawn and landscape care provides a safe, chemical-free environment for your home. By using completely natural, organic lawn care products, you promote green living principles and help to protect the environment from harsh chemicals that can be absorbed into the soil and water. Organic lawn and landscape care also promotes a natural aeration and drainage process in the soil that encourages strong root growth and healthy, stable plants. By adding chemical-free micro-nutrients to the soil, organic mixtures naturally control weed growth and promote stronger resistance to plant diseases and harmful outdoor insects and pests. Organic solutions help to establish a natural ecosystem in your landscape where beneficial insects and organisms exist in the soil. Unlike many traditional lawn care products, organic lawn care products contain no chemicals that can potentially harm your family or pets. Talk to a professional Bergen County landscape company about the benefits of organic landscape design and maintenance services for your home. For best results, organic applications are usually done in the Spring, Summer and Fall.
Landscape Design Services
In addition to keeping your landscape green and healthy with regular care and maintenance, you can also create a beautiful landscape by adding specialty outdoor features that enhance the character and style of your home. Specialty outdoor features can add visual interest and unique details to your landscape. Many landscape design and maintenance companies can design and build great outdoor features for your Northern NJ home.
Outdoor Walkways
Paving stone walkways create beautiful accents for front and backyard landscapes. Front yard walkways will quickly boost your home’s curb appeal and create an inviting entrance to your home for guests. Back yard walkways will create safe pathways to a pool or spa, backyard pond or specialty garden. Paving stone walkways create visual interest in your landscape that draws attention to your home and property. Beautiful stone pavers are available in a wide variety of sizes, shapes, colors and textures, so you can choose a paver that stands out with unique style or naturally blends into your existing landscape. Pavers can be laid in a variety of patterns to create a long winding walkway through the garden or a short, straight pathway from the garage to the house. Since stone pavers are typically installed over a bed of gravel or compacted soil, they’re resilient and resistant to cracking and chipping due to settling like concrete walkways.
Landscape Lighting
Landscape lighting is one of the most important landscape design and maintenance features for your home. It provides a warm, inviting ambiance and creates a comfortable outdoor setting for evening activities. Soft landscape lighting in a dark outdoor environment instantly adds romantic atmosphere, visual interest and dramatic effects to your home and property. You can highlight focal points and interesting features on your house or in your landscape and provide additional safety for your Northern NJ property.
Landscape lighting comes in a variety of low-voltage, LED and solar fixtures. You can choose from various styles and beautiful outdoor finishes like bronze, brass, nickel, chrome, black and white. Uplights and downlights are great for accenting trees, plants, garden beds and architectural details on your house. Pathway lights provide extra safety for walkways, driveways and and patios. Motion detectors provide home safety alerts for unsuspected or unwanted visitors.
Outdoor Water Features
Adding outdoor water features to your landscape can turn your property into a stunning outdoor oasis with soothing water sounds and relaxing ambiance. Whether it’s an elaborate outdoor fountain in a circular driveway, a cascading rock waterfall in a terraced landscape or a quiet backyard Koi pond, outdoor water features will add visual interest and atmosphere to your home and increase your property values. A professional Bergen County landscape company that provides landscape design and maintenance can build wonderful outdoor water features to enhance your home and landscape. Whether your home is traditional or contemporary, large or small, outdoor water features will give your landscape inviting appeal. Talk to a professional about the possibilities of unique water features like waterfalls, ponds, spas, hot tubs and swimming pools for your Northern NJ home.
Retaining Walls
If your home is built on a steep slope or hillside, landscape design and maintenance can be a real challenge. You may encounter a variety of landscape problems including soil erosion, poor drainage and irrigation, standing water or run-offs, weed control, pest control and routine maintenance. Steep slopes, hillsides and terraced landscapes present safety issues for children and pets and prevent outdoor opportunities for entertaining and outdoor activities.
Retaining walls can hold back large hillsides and turn unusable steep slopes into usable outdoor areas. Although retaining walls look like simple decorative landscape features, they are carefully engineered systems. They restrain tons of saturated soil that would otherwise erode down the hillside and cause damage to your home or other landscape areas. Retaining walls increase usable yard space for properties that are built on slopes and terraced hillsides. They can be built in a variety of beautiful materials like timber, stacked stone, flagstone, rock and concrete block, so you can select a material that compliments the style of your home.
