Environmental Insights

To the uninitiated, landscape maintenance doesn’t seem like rocket science: run a mower over the grass each week, trim the bushes, keep everything watered, and sprinkle a few chemicals over the grass every once in a while. Simple, right? So why pay a professional commercial landscape contractor when you can do it cost-effectively in-house?

Or can you?

There are many ways to address a slope. Which one to choose for your property depends on a number of factors, including aesthetics, site conditions, and budget.

First, let’s distinguish between two major categories of erosion control: soft and hard. Soft solutions include any flexible infrastructure that helps keep soil in place. This includes the plants themselves, but there are also many types of materials available that supplement and augment the anti-erosion effect of plant roots. Hard solutions, as their name suggests, include the use of hardscape elements.

Here is a rundown of some of the best options we have found for steep slope erosion control in Georgia.

You may associate planting time with Spring, but when it comes to trees, Fall and Winter rule - at least in our mild climate. (Just another advantage of Southern living - no need to compress all our planting tasks into a few short weeks in spring!)

The reason for this is that it allows the tree to start establishing roots right away without expending energy into shoots and leaves. Planting while a tree is dormant also helps minimize transplant shock.

Recently we listed some of our favorite trees to plant in lawn areas in Georgia. Since prime tree planting time is upon us, we thought we’d follow up with a few tips to help your new trees off to the very best start possible.

Grasslands punctuated with trees and shrubs - in nature, they’re called savannas, and they’re thought to be the original natural habitat of humankind. 

Wetlands are incredibly valuable ecosystems that until recently have been sadly underappreciated. They are an important element in the food web here in Georgia, play an integral role in water quality improvement, flood control, and shoreline erosion control, and have many economic and recreational uses. Scientists tell us that these natural ecosystems even help to regulate the climate.

It’s no wonder, then, that wetlands have started to enjoy increasing protection in recent years as people have become more environmentally aware.

Wetlands mitigation refers to any project that serves to lessen human impact on wetland environments, including wetlands creation, preservation, or restoration. Mitigation typically happens on commercial sites, government construction sites, military installations, large scale housing developments, roadways, and other projects of significant scale.  We are also increasingly seeing mitigation as part of stormwater or wastewater treatment on smaller sites, as part of the retention requirement for stormwater. (We find this very encouraging because wetland plants do a phenomenal job of filtering and reestablishing beneficial organisms in the environment.)

In a recent post, we discussed the benefits of wetland mitigation. Now, let’s explore the topics of wetland mitigation construction costs and hiring a wetland mitigation contractor in Georgia.

As a landscape service provider, it’s just as important to know the needs and habits of your clients as it is to know the varying requirements of different plants for sun, water and soil. A successful approach to landscaping one property might be completely unsuitable for its neighbor, depending on any number of factors. And some types of property demand special attention.

Medical campuses are one of these. Successful medical campus grounds maintenance requires careful planning in order to meet the unique needs of the facility and its occupants.

Let's talk about what goes into properly maintaining a medical campus.

Landscape design for retail areas can be challenging. You’ve got to take a lot of things into account, including safety, accessibility, and economy of space as well as aesthetic appeal. In mixed-use situations, factoring in the needs of residential occupants adds to the challenge.

One big thing to remember when designing retail landscapes is that this space comes at a premium. Parking, utilities, buildings and other infrastructure all must share limited space, so one always has to be thinking about how to best get ROI on amenities spaces. A well-planned installation can successfully tie the disparate elements of the retail landscape together to create a sense of unity in design, even while economizing on space.

Here are some trending outdoor design ideas that are worth considering for retail and mixed-use applications:

"You get what you pay for."  It’s an oft-used quote, but we've all experienced its truth in one way or another.  

On a recent trip, one of my sons commented about the sorry state of the highway we often travel.  This bumpy, wavy, dipping stretch of road was only recently completed, but  it is already full of patches and deteriorating sections.  "This is ridiculous!"  he said.  "Low bid,” I replied.  

And it was exactly that: a low bid job, complete with lawsuits, accusations, blame-casting and near bankruptcies.  So now the taxpayers are shouldering the burden of patching a mess that could have been avoided if not for the "lowest responsive bidder" approach.  Ouch!

Consider this: most of America's infrastructure was and still is being built by the lowest bidder. No wonder it is crumbling! What if we rewarded our athletes by giving trophies to those who invested the least effort in the contest and performed to minimum standards instead of the one who invested great effort to run faster and jump higher?

Okay, I've made my point, so let's move on to a more productive conversation. I posted earlier this year about why low bids often don’t deliver. Now, the question to ask is: “what can be done about it?

There are other ways to approach pricing a project. Here are some alternatives:

Our landscapes here in Central Georgia are located far enough away from the coast to have escaped the worst of Hurricane Matthew’s rampage earlier this month. But even though we are sheltered from the brunt of nature’s fury when it comes to hurricanes and tropical storms, Middle Georgia landscaping presents its own challenges unique to our area.

A Land Of Contrasts

“Middle Georgia” refers to the area roughly 75-100 miles around Macon, including the communities of Forsyth, Dublin, Milledgeville, Hawkinsville, Perry, Eastman, Fort Valley, and surrounding areas. Despite its relatively small size, this area’s geology and climate are actually extremely diverse.

Our region happens to be located smack dab on the Fall Line, an ancient seashore that extends in a diagonal line right across Georgia. The Fall Line marks the boundary between the Piedmont region of rolling hills east of the Appalachians, and the Atlantic Coastal Plain. Conditions above and below the Fall Line can be completely different, which explains in part why middle GA landscaping can be so challenging.

Let’s explore how our geography contributes to some of the common obstacles folks face when it comes to landscaping in the Heart of Georgia.

When it comes to erosion control, design is often not the highest concern. For that reason, we rarely use trees and shrubs for erosion control, especially on commercial and industrial sites. Instead, we usually consider the best plants for erosion control to be grasses and other low-growing plants that are cost-effective to install, quick to establish and readily colonize an area.

However, we do sometimes run into situations where aesthetics take priority. Certainly on a residential site there’s no reason your sloped areas shouldn’t be as beautifully landscaped as the rest of the property. Many municipal and commercial sites can likewise benefit from a designer’s eye.

In these cases trees and shrubs can be an excellent addition to erosion control plantings. On highly viewed slopes near apartment buildings, retail centers, malls, outlet centers, resorts, and similar developments, trees and shrubs add interest to what otherwise might be a boring and uninspiring slope covered in lovegrass or juniper.

Using trees for erosion control can be beneficial in other ways, too. A mixed planting of trees, shrubs, and understory plants avoids a monoculture and brings greater resilience from pests and disease. Trees can help with noise abatement, reduce the heat island effect in urban areas, and bring a sense of calm to drivers and pedestrians. On highway corridors and interstate exits, strategically planted trees and shrubs are visually appealing and can help to reduce glare from oncoming headlights.  

With that in mind, we’d like to highlight some of the trees and shrubs we’ve found best suited for erosion control in the Southeast.