For Florida residences, landscaping maintenance has its own particular set of obstacles. But a beautiful lawn can be a huge asset to the comfortability and appeal of your home.
Don’t let the heat deter you from maintaining an attractive and thoughtful lawn.
Here are the top five landscape maintenance tips for homeowners in Florida.
Proper watering
It might sound basic, but ensuring that your lawn is properly watered is the first step toward adequate landscape maintenance.
Properly watering your lawn will help your grass develop a deep root system which will make it more durable against disease and insect damage.
In the Florida heat, it’s tempting to over water your lawn. But the amount of watering your landscaping will need is entirely dependent upon the amount of rainfall. So you have to stay vigilant and check the weather to adjust your watering schedule.
Mowing
Mowing your lawn helps your grass maintain a healthy level that will look attractive and encourage healthy growth.
The amount of mowing required will depend on the amount of rain and water your lawn is getting, but generally, you will need to mow at least once a week in the summer and every two weeks in the winter.
Think green
In a hot climate like Florida, you can almost not have too much green in your yard. If you’re craving the cooling effects of large, lush plants then consider adding layers of plants outlines with unique natural stone.
When the temperatures are soaring, sitting underneath vaulting palm trees, surrounded by thick and (almost) wild greens will add a delightfully cooling effect to your space.
For more interest to your landscape, consider adding varying layers of low lying ferns and tall palms.
Manage traffic for landscape maintenance
It’s an easy oversight, but you don’t want too much foot traffic on your lawn. Foot traffic can do some serious damage to your grass.
Try to maintain a healthy level of foot traffic and try to avoid rolling your garbage cans through the grass. Certainly, avoid parking or driving any cars on your lawn! You grass wasn’t made to withstand that kind of weight.
You don’t have to shoo neighbors off your lawn when they stop by, but be conscious of how frequently your hosting barbecues in the backyard.
Dealing with disaster
In Florida, we get beautiful weather nearly year-round, pristine beaches and warm and sunny winters. But we also deal with hurricanes.
There’s isn’t a ton of landscaping maintenance that can be done to avoid hurricane damage, but you might want to consider planting your more valuable plants in movable planters. That way if a hurricane or big storm is blowing through you can move them indoors.
Other than that, you’ll mostly have to deal with clean up after a hurricane strike.
Proper landscape maintenance takes some time and effort but the payoff is worth it. When your outdoor space is so beautiful that you hardly want to retreat to the cool AC inside, you’ll know all of those hours of maintenance were worth it.