Posts

Plant Health Care – When Does It Make Sense?

,

If the plants in your community aren’t looking their best, it may be time for some serious plant health care.

Whether it’s trees, shrubs, or flowers, healthy plant life can make a home or neighborhood look much more welcoming and inviting. It also makes the area appear more well-kept which can entice future residents to move in and current residents to stay.

Read on to learn more about plant health care, what it is, and when it makes sense for you to start using it for your property.

The Definition of Plant Health Care

When you hear the term “healthcare,” you probably think of humans first. Plants actually need to be monitored and cared for just like every other living thing on the planet.

The term plant health care means that your plant life is provided with things like vital nutrients they need to thrive and grow. It also involves things like insect and disease control to keep the plants healthy and safe.

The threat of plant-related diseases is much more common than you might think. Pests like Japanese beetles, bagworms, spider mites, and aphids are just a few examples of the potentially damaging pests that can wreak total havoc on your beautiful plants. With regular plant health care practices, your trees and shrubs will bloom, look greener, and be much more attractive.

In order to ensure that your plant life is thriving, you should consider bringing in an expert for a plant health care service. This service will help to select the best plants for your property, develop an efficient maintenance plan for those plants, and come up with a plan to defend against potential threats, thereby protecting your investment (aka your plants) from damage and disease.

Keeping plants healthy all year round will ensure that they grow and look beautiful for many years to come.

Quality care ensures that your plants stay fresh, healthy-looking, and attractive through the changing seasons.

Being proactive ensures that the plants you use will remain in great shape as time goes on.

What Are the Benefits?

When you enlist the help of a professional plant health care provider, you’ll reap a variety of benefits. These plant pros know exactly what your specific plant life needs to thrive and stay healthy.

They’ll work to improve your water usage to not only save you money but also to ensure that your plants are receiving the correct amount of water they need. Soil tests will be performed to ensure that the soil around your property is healthy and compacted properly.

If any threat is found, the plant health care professionals will work to eliminate it in a responsible manner. This tactic is usually done in an eco-friendly way so as not to cause harm to your landscaping or the environment. With early treatment, problems can be eliminated before they get out of hand.

With regular care, your plants will look incredible. They’ll grow and blossom, creating an attractive look around your neighborhood, association, condominium complex, and home. 

Landscape consultants will assess your plants and determine what needs to be added or removed. When you work side-by-side with these professionals, you’ll see just how much time and effort goes into maintaining plant life. As time goes on, your property will look much more attractive to potential buyers or tenants.

Why Would You Use Plant Health Care?

If you’re a manager of an HOA or other property community you already have a full plate and may not have the time to consider a holistic approach when it comes to the health of your landscaping. You have to think about the selection of plants you have, practice proper planting techniques, and the maintenance of those plants. You also need to consider pest control and what companion plants to choose. It can quickly become overwhelming!

There’s an intricate process involved in plant health care designed to ensure your property looks its best. Some of the things that a plant health care professional will do include:

  • Selecting the right plants for aesthetic and other purposes like noise barriers
  • Planting for shade where it’s needed to provide residents with a pleasant landscape
  • Making site considerations such as soil type and condition, climate, drainage, and available planting space
  • Determining the proper methods for pest resistance to keep plants healthy
  • Devising a plan to ensure that all plants are healthy and well-maintained

A plant health care professional will give you advice on what you can do to be proactive to keep your plants healthy and happy. They may also inspect the surrounding areas for signs of pest damage in other places in order to assess the threat to your plants.

You can also change your current landscaping layout and include a new selection of plant life that’s native to your area. Experienced arborists will asses your trees to make sure they’re all healthy and in good condition.

When you opt to focus on your plants, the entire community will flourish and appreciate the beauty of the landscaping. It’s also a smart way to increase property values. Healthy landscaping entices renters and current residents to stay or to move into your community.

Leave Plant Health to the Pros

If you manage an HOA or other residential community, it’s easy to see how plant health care can benefit your community. With some proper planting and planning, your landscaping will look aesthetically pleasing and your plants will thrive.

Choose a professional company that understands the needs of residential landscaping so you can enjoy your plants without the fear of pests or disease. We want to see your plants stay healthy and grow, so be sure to contact us today for more information on how you can get started taking care of the plants on your property.

Contact Us Today!
/by

What Role Should a Contractor Play in Water Management?

,

While water management is an important topic for any HOA, apartment complex, or city, communities in Southern California must be exceptionally aware of water usage in landscaping. Because of frequent drought periods and water surcharges, monitoring and reducing water usage is good for the environment and the budget. So how can community managers work with a landscaping contractor to make this happen?

One of the most important things when choosing a reputable landscaping contractor to work with on water management for your community or HOA is understanding what should be expected of them. Knowing what questions to ask and services to look for when meeting with a potential landscaping partner will go a long way in making a smart business decision.

Below are some of the tasks that a landscaping contractor should include for any city or housing community in order to cut their water usage and improve water management efforts:

Incorporate Eco-Friendly Landscaping Designs in Common Areas

Working with your landscaping company to incorporate environmentally-conscious design elements into your community’s common areas is one of the best ways to help water management efforts and can provide a unique, attractive landscape that will catch your potential residents’ eye.

Because of the wonderful variety of plants that are native to Southern California, it is possible to have an attractive landscaping design while primarily using plants that do not require excessive amounts of water. A good landscaping contractor will work with you to incorporate eco-friendly elements into your design such as:

  • Replacing grass with high-quality gravel and stone
  • Utilizing succulents into the design, such as cacti or aloe
  • Planting hearty perennial flowers in lieu of ones that require frequent watering
  • Using a dry stream to guide water flow after rains
  • Adding mulch to help the soil retain moisture

As the landscaping company makes updates like this throughout the design, property managers will begin to see a big impact on overall water usage and expenditure for the community.

Have an Expert Knowledge of Plants’ Watering Needs 

When it comes to water management, it is essential to understand the different needs of plants and adjust the watering and maintenance plans accordingly. Your landscaping contractor should be aware of which plants get afternoon sun—making them likely to need more water—or which sections of the lawn are primarily shaded throughout the day.

Having this inherent knowledge of what plants need can go a long way in cutting down on the water usage for the entire community. Choosing to work with a landscaping expert that is local to Southern California and understands the unique needs of this region will be extremely helpful in preventing water from going to waste.

Perform Irrigation Retrofits for the Community

While irrigation is not something that every HOA or apartment complex will be interested in using, it is important to work with a contractor who can perform an irrigation retrofit if that is something the community might decide to do in the future. 

Irrigation systems allow housing communities or cities to obtain detailed control over water usage. They allow water to be turned on and off remotely and allow the flow to be controlled in zones, creating different levels of watering volume. This ensures that every type of plant gets the water it requires, without the waste or over-watering associated with performing a blanketed soaking. This increased efficiency can lead to an extreme reduction in water usage overall.

Keep Up With Regular Maintenace Checks Around Common Areas

When it comes to water usage, even something as small as a single-drip leak or not switching an automated system to new settings when Daylight Savings Time ends can make a big impact if it is left untreated. Especially for communities in Southern California, every drop that is wasted can have an impact on the budget and the overall health of the landscaping work.

Watching for leaking hoses, malfunctioning sprinklers, or cracks in piping are all essential tasks for a landscaping contractor to perform, and it can save the community quite a bit on water management expenses in the long run. Additionally, the landscaping contractor should closely monitor and frequently recalibrate any automated systems based on time of year, angle of sunlight, and other factors that might cause a discrepancy between the water used and what the plants actually need.

Report on Water Usage for the Community

A good landscaping company should not simply reassure you that water is being saved without any evidence—instead, look for a contractor that will be able to provide community managers with clear reports on the impact of your efforts. 

By utilizing monthly reports, quarterly numbers, and year-over-year comparisons, a community manager can see exactly how any changes and updates have impacted their water management budget. Having the reporting and data regarding water usage will be extremely helpful for property managers to assess their water usage and make decisions about any extra steps necessary to reach their target water usage goal.

While community managers have many things to consider when choosing a landscaping contractor to work with, one of the most important things for Southern California HOAs, apartment complexes, or cities to be sure of is that they are choosing a landscaping partner they can trust and that is exceptionally knowledgable of the latest best practices in landscape and water management. Not only does this create a more beautiful and water-efficient community overall, but it also ensures that they are facilitating an environment that their residents will love for years to come.

At Monarch Environmental, we are made up of a team of EPA Water Sense Partners and Certified Water Managers that are passionate about working with community managers to reach their water management goals. If you’d like to learn more about our water management expertise, check out our list of water management services and contact us today.

Contact Us Today!
/by

What Role Does Your Community Manager Play In Managing Your Landscape?

,

As a member of a homeowner association (HOA), you likely value a beautiful neighborhood and home. One of the best parts of your membership is that you usually have minimal landscaping responsibilities while being able to enjoy all the benefits of expert maintenance.

Instead of you having to go out and mow the lawn, contractors hired out by your HOA community manager and board bear the brunt of lawn and garden upkeep. Because the landscape is one of the first things you notice when entering any community, it’s crucial that the community manager has the right priorities when it comes to hiring professional landscaping contractors. The role of a community manager should be like conducting an orchestra not playing an instrument. The community manager must understand the needs of the landscape in order to find the right instrument to play the “Landscape”. 

Determining Community Needs

Your community manager is ultimately responsible for enforcing decisions made by your HOA board, as long as they are in line with community bylaws and policies. This means that as soon as the board is in agreement with what their landscaping priorities are, your manager should seek out professional contractors to fulfill these priorities quickly and successfully. 

Landscaping contractors can have a wide range of diverse responsibilities that may change with the seasons. Some key duties of professional landscaping include tree maintenance and emergency tree removal (in times of extreme weather), water and irrigation system management, lawn mowing, pruning, weeding, and general maintenance.

A great way for your community manager to determine the direction for the landscape is to distribute a survey to all members of the community. Your HOA board members may develop a questionnaire that includes questions to determine what homeowners want and need more of, what they can live without, and how important landscaping is in relation to their overall community satisfaction.

Hiring Professional Landscaping Contractors

Once your HOA community manager understands what the residents want and need and is in full agreement with the board members, they should begin to search for contractors. There are many things to keep in mind when searching for highly rated, top quality landscaping maintenance. Your manager should go into each search with prepared questions; how a contractor answers the prioritized questions will quickly determine if they are worth the pre-determined HOA landscaping budget.

“What value can your landscaping company bring to my community?”

This is an important but often overlooked point to be discussed when hiring contractors. In addition to their advertised services such as the standard watering, pruning, and mowing, contracting companies should be able to provide other services that will increase the market value of an HOA neighborhood. Examples include offering regular landscape checkups to determine existing issues and then recommending cost-effective solutions. It’s one thing to maintain the flower beds, but if a contractor can determine which plants would thrive better in your community and make a plan to implement them, your HOA gets an added value and a little extra curb appeal.

“Do you hire subcontractors? What, if any, background checks do you conduct for potential employees?”

Again, this is a question that your HOA manager should be asking any potential landscaping company. It will save time and hassle in the long run if your board is aware that their main contractor hires out various subcontractors for specialized projects. Being aware of main contacts and who to address concerns to, especially if there is a problem with work performed by a subcontractor, will almost always ensure a faster response and more thorough solution.

It’s also important to know if those subcontractors are subjected to the same background checks and/or drug testing that the main landscaping contractors go through. No matter what the process is, having an understanding of it establishes a certain level of trust between HOA members and any contractors working on the property. If the faces aren’t always familiar because there are instances where subcontractors are needed for one-time or specialized projects, it’s reassuring to know that they are trusted and qualified professionals.

Ask Why

Overall, your HOA community manager is responsible for ensuring the assets in the community are managed correctly.

Ask contractors “Why” rather than “How.” 

Why did you choose this field? Why do you want to work with us? This question gets to the heart of that matter and cuts out the marketing material. You want a contractor that knows why they would serve you best not just how. 

This sounds like a lot of work!

Fortunately, there are helpful resources for ensuring this process goes as smoothly as possible. Monarch Environmental works with your HOA community manager and board members to assist in all aspects of hiring landscaping contractors. Monarch understands that quality landscape design has a huge impact on overall community satisfaction, market value, and curb appeal. We strive to ensure that every landscaping priority is met in a timely fashion, well within your community’s budget, and performed in 100% compliance with all HOA bylaws and policies. From pest control to irrigation, Monarch will audit any landscaping work performed by designated contractors to make sure it is complete, safe, and always at the right price.

Call Monarch Environmental at (949) 207-3770 for more information on our quality services, or send us a message on our contact page.

Contact Us Today!
/by

7 Ways to Add Value to Your HOA on a Small Budget

,

In an economy that is slowing down, consumers need to be smart about where their money is spent. When it comes to Home Owners Associations landscaping is typically the biggest number on the budget. This is for good reason; experts agree that a well-maintained landscape may add more than 15% to the value of the property. Here are a few creative ways to reduce spending while adding value to the community:

1 – Get a Plan

Work with your contractor to establish a healthy priority list for the community. What assets does the community already have that can be highlighted?

2 – Recycle

Mulch is a great way to limit water use and prevent weeds from germinating. In addition, recycling green waste is a great way to be environmentally responsible.

3 – Free Money

Millions of dollars are allocated to encourage HOA’s to invest in new technology and turf removal that maximizes water usage. Proper management and new technology are two easy ways to reduce unnecessary spending.

Visit www.bewaterwise.com for more information.

4 – Volunteer Days 

Have a community day. Assign specific tasks for homeowners to participate in once a quarter.  The more homeowners involved in keeping the community beautiful the fewer dollars you have to spend having someone else do it.

5 – Sustainable Plants 

Limit the amount of seasonal color used in high profile areas. There are some beautiful natives worth exploring.

6 – Plant Selection

Areas that don’t require immediate gratification may do well with smaller plant sizes. The smaller sizes are less expensive than the larger more established plants.  When possible, select plants that require low water and low maintenance. Avoid plants that will increase your maintenance budget.

7 – Maintenance 

Deferred maintenance on irrigation and trees are two areas that will cost the association more money in the long run. Ask your contractor to help generate creative ideas that allow the board to identify areas of maintenance that should not be avoided.

Finally, enjoy your landscape and the money you saved.

/by