Seasonal Landscaping Strategies for Commercial Properties: A Year-Round Guide

There’s a lot to love about the changing seasons here in the Mid-Atlantic — plump porch pumpkins in fall, the first grilled burgers of summer, the thrill of remembering where you put your snow brush as the first flakes fly.

Your commercial property landscaping marks the changing seasons, too, from spring daffodils to falling leaves to smart dormant pruning in winter. 

Seasonal landscape maintenance is a crucial part of keeping your commercial property landscaping healthy, thriving, tidy and impressive.

There’s a lot going on out there as the stunning seasons change. Let’s get to it, with some seasonal landscape maintenance tips to make your property shine.

Table of Contents

1. Spring Commercial Landscape Maintenance 
2. Summer Seasonal Landscaping Tips
3. Fall Landscape Maintenance Tips 
4. Winter Commercial Landscape Maintenance 
5. Sustainability Practices
6. Seasonal Landscaping Success Stories
7. Choosing a Commercial Landscaping Company in DC, Maryland, or Virginia

Spring Commercial Landscape Maintenance

Spring! It’s a celebration here in the Mid-Atlantic and for good reason. 

Daffodils are blooming. Lawns are greening up. No more stress over slick snow and ice.

You’re ready for it. But is your commercial property landscaping ready for it? 

What spring services do you need?  It’s a busy time of year out there:

Spring Clean-up

Does your commercial property landscaping get all the spring cleanup it needs after a long messy winter?

Make sure you’re putting your best face forward.  

Sure, we’re talking about cleaning up for curb appeal. You have customers to impress. Tenants to attract. Property owners to please. And when you take that lunchtime stroll outside, you want it to impress you, too. 

But spring cleanup tasks — an important part of your commercial landscape maintenance — are done for the health of your landscaping, too.

Perennials need trimming so they’ll rejuvenate for spring. Fresh mulch keeps weeds down and conserves moisture for the hot summer months ahead.

Your turf can’t thrive if it’s clogged with soggy leaves and a blanket of fallen twigs.
Start spring with a clean sweep.

Flower Power

Nothing shouts spring like those first beautiful blooms. 

Spring flowers are a cheerful welcome after the often-gray gloom of winter. And everybody notices them. 

Which blossoms are best to brighten your commercial property landscaping?  

Pansies? Violas? Daffodils? 
Check, check, check. 

Don’t forget native plants.   

Black-eyed Susans, coneflowers and perennial geraniums will last from spring right through Maryland’s hot, humid summers. 

Bonus: They’re also friends to bees, butterflies and birds and are one of the prettiest sustainable landscaping practices. 

But spring flowers are just the beginning. Keep that flower show going. 
Imagine: when spring flowers fade, you get a bright new batch for summer. When those get tired, here comes a whole new truckload to brighten your fall!

Year-round landscaping means flower bed color rotation that keeps your property bright and impressive through the seasons.  

Time for Mulch

Don’t get us started about the great powers of mulch. Oops, too late. 

Yes, a fresh layer of mulch looks amazing. But that’s not the only reason it should be part of your landscaping maintenance schedule. It also helps your soil retain moisture, so you won't have to water as much.

It keeps those pesky weeds at bay by blocking the sunlight they need to sprout.
Mulch protects your plants' roots — both from the scorching sun and winter’s chill.
It prevents rain from washing away your landscape soil. 

And it’s working hard out there even when it starts to wear thin. It’s breaking down, enriching your soil and making it more fertile.

There’s much to love about mulch.

Don’t skip it.

April Showers: Don’t Forget Drainage

April showers bring more than just May flowers. They bring extra water. Can your commercial property landscaping handle it? 

Or is it already soggy, damp or mildewy?

Without proper commercial landscape drainage, excess water can cause serious damage to your commercial property and its landscaping, 

Luckily, there are plenty of commercial drainage solutions, from regrading to French drains to rain gardens. 

Check them out before you need waders for your parking lot.

Spring Irrigation Start-up

Winter is tough on your irrigation system. Just the sprinkler heads alone really take a beating. Snowplows clobber them. They get clogged with debris. The ground freezes and thaws around them, heaving them out of whack. 

When it’s time to turn them on in the spring, you can hardly blame them for spraying haphazardly — or not at all. 

Enter your spring start-up inspection. It’s a key part of your commercial landscape maintenance. 

Irrigation maintenance technicians will turn on your water supply and check each zone of your system to make sure it’s working perfectly. They’ll check water pressure, inspect sprinkler heads, controls and sensors. If anything needs adjusting, fixing or replacing, they’re on top of it. 

They might even suggest efficiency upgrades that will save you money during the long watering season ahead.

Summer Seasonal Landscaping Tips

What’s not to love about summer? 
Ice cream cones. Ball games. Hot dogs. Flip flops. Lawn weeds. Plant diseases. Whoa, that list took a sudden bad turn. 

Make sure your commercial property landscaping survives the challenging season with these summer landscape maintenance tips:

Your Summer Lawn Needs Serious Attention

This is where everybody’s eyes land first, right? On your healthy expanse of neatly mowed, emerald green lawn. It makes your whole property look good. 

Of course, regular lawn mowing is a must — grass grows fast around here in the summer. 

But summer also means your lawn is under attack — from damaging drought, ravenous bugs, and aggravating weeds.

What summer lawn care do you need as part of your landscaping maintenance schedule? 

Quite a bit, from mowing and fertilizing to weed control.

Bring on the Big Planters

Summer means more eyes up close on your commercial property landscaping — from strolling pedestrians to outdoor diners. 

Wow them with supersize planters packed with bountiful blooms. 

Decorative pots big enough to hold trees make an instant impressive impact when used in the landscaping of hotels, office buildings, shopping plazas and other commercial properties.

What to plant? So many choices. 

Large tropical plants add drama. Think exotic banana trees, great for large containers. Other stunning choices are white bird of paradise, alocasia and variegated ginger.

Palms make a big statement. Good picks include Majesty, Adonidia, King Sago and Robellini.

Annual grasses are great fillers. Pennisetum rubrum or Fireworks varieties offer a fun purple or pink punch.

Bring on the spectacle and wait for the wows.

Pests and Plant Diseases: How to Tell What’s Attacking

Summer is in full swing, and something’s not right out there. 

Plant leaves are turning yellow and drying up. Shoots and buds are withering. Trees and shrubs are dying. 

What’s going on out there? 

Is it sap-eating scale? Tiny spider mites? Dastardly aphids? 

It can be tricky to identify damaging insects.  They’re tiny. They hide under leaves. Their damage can look similar to assorted plant diseases like cankers or rose rosette. That makes a pro’s insight especially helpful.

Commercial landscape maintenance services have experts with the training and knowledge to detect exactly what’s going on out there, and fix it fast — without harming the other, unaffected plants in your landscape.

Save Water with Sustainable Landscaping Solutions

Careless irrigation wastes water. You don’t want that on your watch, right?

These days, there’s no excuse, with the latest in landscape irrigation technology. 

On tap: water-saving valves and nozzles; rain sensors so irrigation systems don’t water unnecessarily; smarter controllers that adapt to weather conditions; and drip irrigation that targets water at the roots specifically where plants need it.

Beyond that, take advantage of regular irrigation system checkups where irrigation pros look for broken sprinkler heads, clogged lines, or other problems that can waste water.

Summer is Hardscaping Season

Whether you need an impressive new paver patio or your current hardscape needs repair, summer is a great time for crews to tackle these projects.
Tree roots crack concrete walkways. Moss and weeds sneak in between pavers. Poor water drainage causes pavers to sink. If you don't fix cracks or sunken hardscape, it always gets worse. Then you have a tripping hazard and liability worries.

Fall Landscape Maintenance Tips

Summer gets a lot of landscaping love, but don’t count fall out — it’s a stunner of a season with lots going on for your commercial property landscaping.

Best Fall Seasonal Color

It’s time your hard-working summer flowers get a break.

The beauties have been on the job all season, adding vibrant color and attracting attention. 

But they’re getting tired. They’re no longer making your commercial property landscaping shine. 

Hello, second string. Bring on the cheerful pansies, big bursts of mums, cool, ruffly cabbages and kale. Get on board with the perfect fall color plants for your property.

The weather here in the DC area, Maryland and Virginia is mild enough right through November to enjoy the outdoors, Residents taking evening strolls, customers running errands and workers ducking out for lunch in the sunshine all appreciate cheerful year-round landscaping right into December.

Transplant Those Perennials

Your perennial plants are the hardest workers in your commercial property landscaping. Sure, they look great, but they also keep coming back, reliably and beautifully, every year. And they actually get bigger and more plentiful.

But after a few years, perennials need dividing and transplanting in order to stay happy and healthy. Make sure this fall task is part of your commercial landscape maintenance services.

Fall is the perfect time to transplant perennials in the Mid-Atlantic. 

Dividing and transplanting perennials leaves you with more plants — perfect for adding to other high-visibility places on your commercial property. For free!

Your Landscaping Needs Some Fall Love

Once the air is cool, football games beckon and pumpkins pop up on porches, it’s easy to forget about your lawn, trees and shrubs. They’re fine, right? 

They still need you. How to prepare your landscaping for winter?

Aeration

Fall is a great time to aerate your property's lawn to loosen up the compacted soil. 

Aerating pokes small holes in your lawn to let water, air and fertilizer get down to the soil. All that strengthens the roots, which creates a healthier lawn.

Seeding and Feeding

It’s time for one last application of grass seed and fertilizer, while the soil is still warm enough for grass seed to get established and develop roots.

Fall is for fertilizing — it’s the most important time of the year for feeding and a key part of your commercial landscape maintenance services. This fertilizer application isn’t designed to green up your grass or encourage leaf growth. It’s all about the roots. This dose of fertilizer also replenishes nutrients lost during the hot summer.

Fall Care for Shrubs and Trees

Shrubs need one last pruning, so they continue to look good through the winter.
It’s important to prune and thin tree branches before winter as part of your commercial landscape maintenance. Frail or damaged branches, once coated with heavy ice, could topple, posing a safety hazard on your property.

Benefits of Fall Planting

If you think spring is the best time of year to put plants in the ground, well, fall wants a word with you.

Don't be fooled by the chill in the air. The ground is plenty warm enough for plants, and there are lots of benefits to fall planting from warm soil to cool rainy fall days.

It’s Time for Bulbs

Fall is the time to plant tulip, daffodil and crocus bulbs for a dazzling display of color come spring.

If you have to pick one type, go for daffodils. They typically come back with a cheerful show for a few seasons, making them both a stunning and economical choice for seasonal landscaping for commercial properties.

Don’t Forget the Water

Even though the sun doesn't beat down the way it does in the summer, your newly planted friends still need plenty of water until the ground freezes.

Winter Commercial Landscape Maintenance

Winter is a tricky season here in the Mid-Atlantic. Sometimes it’s a balmy 50 degrees. Other times it’s a blizzarding mess of snow and ice.

Make sure your commercial property is prepared for anything winter throws its way. 

Here’s how:

Have a Solid Snow and Ice Removal Plan

If your property isn’t safely prepared for a winter storm, you could be liable for any accidents or injuries on your property, including to employees, customers, and visitors.

Expert, dependable commercial snow removal in DC, Maryland, and Northern Virginia is crucial. 

Partner with a company that specializes in constant communication and offers several different types of snow removal contracts, including seasonal. 

Customers with a seasonal snow and ice management contract pay a set amount for snow and ice services for the season — no matter how much snow falls or how many visits to your property are needed. 

No nail biting. 

When you trust a skilled and reputable commercial snow and ice management company with your commercial snow removal, that’s one less big worry on your mind.

Protect Your Precious Plants

You can’t exactly outfit every plant on your commercial property landscaping with parkas, warm boots and mittens.

So how do you keep your plants protected from winter’s icy fingers? 

Mulch to keep plant roots cozy. Careful landscaping practices like keeping snow piles off of shrubs and taking care with ice melt products. 

Winter is also a great time for a few other smart plant care tactics, like dormant pruning and applying horticultural oil to prevent insect infestations in the spring.

Making Sure Your Property is Safe

Winter comes with a whole list of worries for commercial property managers. 

Is your property being cleared of dangerous snow and ice? When will crews show up? Do those snow removal crews really know what they’re doing out there? 

How do you make sure your property is safe when every surface is getting slicker by the second? 

Wouldn’t it be nice to put your winter worries to rest? It absolutely would. 

Partner with a snow removal company that:

• Keeps you in the know about your winter landscaping safety, with a detailed proactive communication plan. 
• Offers a seasonal snow removal contract and will service your site whenever there’s a legitimate risk of snow or ice. You don’t have to worry or decide whether you want your property treated.
• Has its own meteorologist on call and team members who monitor several online weather resources, using the same models and data meteorologists use.
• Offers extensive snow and ice management safety training for crews on multiple levels.
• Visits your property for a thorough pre-season inspection, walking your property with you and taking notes on important details about your site and its needs.

When you hire experts with a proven track record for snow and ice management safety, you can put your worries to rest. 

You need your sleep.

Leaf Removal: Get the Gunk Off Your Lawn

Soggy, decaying leaves smother your turf and keep it from thriving. They need to go. Here at Level Green Landscaping, crews mulch leaves whenever possible, using a mulching mower that breaks the leaves down into nutritious bits beneficial to your turf.

But if you have a small property with lots of trees, you may have too many leaves to mulch. In that case, crews remove them with a leaf vacuum, which shreds them and loads them onto a truck.
The leaves are trucked to a composting facility to turn into compost to enrich planting beds.

Rejuvenation Pruning for Healthy Trees and Shrubs

Rejuvenation pruning is the removal of old, overgrown limbs so that your trees and shrubs can grow new, vigorous branches in their place. 
 
Winter is a great time to prune, when your commercial property landscaping’s trees and shrubs are dormant. When we head out with the pruning shears to shape and thin, we won’t do as much damage as we would by pruning in their prime growing months.
 
Pruning keeps your trees and shrubs healthy. And a healthy landscape saves you money, time and hassle.
 
It’s a safety issue, too. Trees and shrubs that get too overgrown and gangly can snag pedestrians, obscure your signage, and block your lighting.

Sustainability: How Green is Your Commercial Property Landscaping?

When you’re listing landscape maintenance tips, one big one should top your list: think sustainability. 

After all, we only have one earth. But there are lots of ways to protect it. 

Partner with commercial landscape maintenance services that incorporate sustainable landscaping practices in everything they do.

There are plenty of ways to have an earth-friendly commercial property, 
from attractive hard-working rain gardens to green roofs to electric equipment to innovative lawn mowing robots. 

When you look for a commercial landscape maintenance company for your property, ask about their sustainable landscaping practices. 

We know sustainability is a top priority for our customers, and we incorporate green practices into all our services, from using mowing techniques that reduce the need for spray chemicals to recycling our green waste.

Seasonal Landscaping Success Stories

Every commercial property has its own unique needs, but here in the four-season splendor of the Mid-Atlantic, everybody has a few seasonal landscaping needs in common: skilled, dependable snow and ice management. Spring and fall clean-ups to clear away the bounty of fallen autumn leaves and messy debris. Bright, eye-catching summer flowers and dependable irrigation maintenance to keep them thriving. 

Take a look at four thriving properties who depend on Level Green to help them shine with year-round landscaping.

West Market Community Association

West Market at Reston Town Center is a high-end community with high expectations. Residents expect their neighborhood to look great all the time, no
matter the season. 

Situated 10 miles outside of Washington DC in Reston, Va., West Market is a lush and leafy community, from its surrounding woods to carpets of elegant English ivy to a number of planting beds — more than your typical HOA neighborhood. It needs a lot of attention, with a year-round landscaping maintenance schedule. 

Brightview Senior Living

Brightview Senior Living trusts Level Green Landscaping for commercial landscape maintenance services at five of its Mid-Atlantic locations, including one in Annapolis. 

Most of the residents at Brightview have owned their own homes. Some are even master gardeners. Lush, healthy landscaping makes the place feel like home. 

That means pretty beds and planters brimming with bright annuals; lots of perennials; trees for shade and beauty; and an impressive explosion of color each spring from 2,000 tulips. 

Find out how Level Green’s weekly commercial landscape maintenance visits keep it all looking great.  

Park Potomac

Once you’re at Park Potomac, why leave? 
The popular mixed-use development of townhouses, condos, apartments, office buildings, a shopping center, and restaurants offers everything you need, day and night, in Potomac, Maryland, outside of Washington, DC. 

There’s a lot going on all the time, so the whole site has to look great, right down to the grassy green lawns, the wide beds of cheerful yellow daylilies, and the pretty hanging baskets of blooming pink begonias.

Read about how Level Green tends to the green growing needs of this bustling, high-end property.

Howard University Hospital

Patients in wheelchairs relax in the cool respite of towering shade trees at Howard University Hospital, pausing to inhale the fragrance of dozens of rose bushes.

Hospitals are stressful. Peaceful landscaped grounds at the Washington DC health care facility offer some calm.

Learn how the hospital partners with Level Green for all their commercial landscape maintenance needs, from a comprehensive landscaping update to their seasonal snow and ice management contract that covers them for one set price — no matter how much snow falls.

Choosing Commercial Landscape Maintenance Services in DC, Maryland or Virginia

Maybe you’ve been down this road before. You hired commercial landscape maintenance services and they didn’t meet your high expectations. 

Make this time different.

Check out a few tips here for choosing the commercial landscaping company that will be the right fit for you. 

Since there’s no such thing as too many helpful tips, here’s a few more:

Ask About Your Relationship

You want an honest, open relationship with your commercial landscaping company with a focus on great communication and proactivity. 

Sure, this is business, but you want a trusted, valued relationship, too.

Make the Most of Your Face Time

When you meet a potential new commercial landscaping company on your property for the first time, make every minute of your walk-through count.  

Will They Have Proactive Ideas for Improvements?

In today’s competitive market, you need perks that will attract customers, buyers and tenants. Be better than the other guys. 

Your commercial landscaping company should be full of innovative ideas.

Ask Why You Should Choose Them

Give the landscaping company you’re considering a chance to prove they’re your best choice.

Why should you choose them over the other guys? They should have plenty of good answers.

Trust Your Commercial Landscaping to Level Green in Washington DC, Maryland and Virginia

At Level Green Landscaping, our core service is commercial landscape maintenance, and our customers have high expectations, no matter the season. 

We go beyond landscape maintenance to offer construction and landscape design, landscape enhancements, snow and ice management and irrigation management.

If you’re not already a Level Green Landscaping client, we’d love to add you to our growing list of happy customers. Our focus is on commercial properties like offices, mixed-use sites, HOAs, municipalities and institutions in Maryland, Washington DC and parts of Virginia.

Contact us at 202-544-0968. You can also request a free consultation online to meet with us one-on-one.

We’d love to hear from you.

Image Source: aphids