Environmental Insights

Dog days are upon us. From the time I was old enough to understand conversation I understood at the core of my being what the term “dog days” meant: it was those days in late summer when the temp hit 95˚ or better, the humidity went over 95% and the gnats came out in droves. The dogs would just lie  under the porch in the shade and pant, not even moving their tails until long after dark.

While outside temperatures in Georgia may still be sweltering at the end of summer, before long most business owners’ thoughts will turn to planning and budgeting for next season. As a commercial property owner or manager, you’re concerned with making every budget dollar count.

It's inevitable. Every summer, the central Georgia heat and humidity promote out-of-control grass (and weed) growth. It really seems like an impossible task to keep your property looking well-maintained during the summer months. Even if you do manage to keep up with the growth, you still have to deal with the mountains of clippings that pile up and drift across your sidewalks and driveways. Plus, you often feel guilty about inflating your carbon footprint with all the constant mowing.

Unless you think your customers and employees would enjoy the sight of a barren expanse of asphalt with nothing to shade or cool it when it heats up hotter than blazes in the summer sun, trees are a must for parking lots in the South.

However, not all trees are equal for this purpose. In fact, there are definite do’s and don’ts when comes to trees for paved areas and parking lot islands here in central and southern Georgia.

Humor me and let’s start with the don’ts. Even though we see it done all the time, I will go so far as to say that it is an egregious crime to plant any of these trees where they will be surrounded by hot asphalt:

Whether it’s to do right by the environment or to protect the health of people and pets, more and more people in Georgia and elsewhere are becoming interested in living a less toxic lifestyle. It’s a choice that can impact just about every aspect of life—including lawn care.  

Here at T.Lake, we get it.  We’re outside people.  We like to go barefoot with the children and roll around in the grass with the dog. Their health, and ours, matters to us—a lot. So we certainly want to avoid unnecessary chemical use. But “Can you do organic lawn care?” is not a simple question for us to answer.

Of course, the easy reply is, “of course we can.” But the truth is, a 100% organic approach may not make you 100% happy. Here’s why.

Since T. Lake’s inception in 1990, we’ve had a lot of employees come and go. Many of them didn’t last too long; we have a habit of weeding out the ones that don’t have enough grit or have too many vices. But we also attract our share of hardy souls who thrive on hard work, good old fashioned horse sense, and a job well done. These are the people who tend to stick around, and we appreciate them more than we could ever express in words.

That said, a few words of appreciation are always in order. So I thought it would be nice to spotlight a few of these individuals here, to recognize them for their excellence and the value they bring not only to T. Lake and the customers we serve, but to each of us as people and to the greater communities to which we belong.

And the very first person to spring to mind as a deserving recipient of this kind of recognition is our longest tenured employee, John Truman Berryhill II.

Want to know how to install professional-looking landscape lighting? Sure, I can give you some landscape lighting tips. I’ll post a few of my best below.

But first, bear with me, because I just have to rant about what NOT to do with landscape lighting. It’s actually easy to demonstrate. All you have to do is get in your car and ride around after dark. I can almost guarantee that within a few blocks you’ll have passed case after case of really bad lighting installations.

Like the giant square box runway lights that just blast light at a building as if it were daylight, doing nothing to highlight the architecture or evoke a mood.

Or the residence where somebody bought bullet lights and aimed them at a shrub, and it looks like what Moses saw on Mount Horeb: a single bush all alight with nothing but harsh shadows all around.

Or the facade of a house that has a bright, bright light in one spot right next to a patch of blackness so dark the devil could be hiding there. It’s jarring. When will people learn that you can’t just go buy lights and point them at things and expect it to come out looking good?

Now that I’ve got that off my chest, let’s talk about how to do landscape lighting right.

Looking for a career in landscaping? Wondering if T.Lake is the company for you? We’re always on the lookout for top talent, so if you think you’re a good fit we’d love to hear from you. But before you do, let us give you a little peek into what it’s like to work at T.Lake, because we’re not for everyone.

Here at T. Lake we are problem solvers to the core. We love a challenge! In addition to the whole range of landscape work from hardscape design and installation to tree service to wetland mitigation, we’ve done everything from caulking and applying epoxy coatings onto warehouse floors to fly-over roof inspections with drones, to removal of slag and millings from manufacturing floor pits.

Our thought process is to look at the particular issue you have and find a better way to deal with it. This will often require solutions beyond the ordinary—and it is not uncommon for those solutions to require the use of specialty equipment.

“What does tree trimming cost?”

Like many pricing questions, this one has no simple answer. Instead, let me give you the lowdown on what goes into tree trimming cost estimation, so you can better understand the bids you receive.