You don’t have time to adequately care for your lawn. It’s okay to admit this; grass requires hours of work every week, especially during growing seasons, and many homeowners simply have too many other high-priority responsibilities to manage lawn care, too. Fortunately, there is no shortage of lawn care services — in fact, in most areas, there is a veritable glut of lawn care providers to choose from.
Unfortunately, it is possible to make the wrong choice when selecting your lawn care service. If you opt for a service at random, you could end up with inexpert care for an exorbitant price. It’s imperative that you diligently follow the process for identifying ideal lawn care providers — and that process is explained in detail here.
Know What You Need
Before you start looking for a lawn care service, you should take stock of your lawn care needs. At the very least, you should think about what kinds of lawn care services you’ll need. For instance, if you are willing to administer fertilizer and grass seed once per year but you need help with weekly mowing and other frequent maintenance, you should note that. Alternatively, you might be able to mow on a regular schedule, but you need professional assistance with chemicals like herbicide and pesticide. Undoubtedly, knowing how much care you are willing to provide will help you in your search.
However, just as important is knowing a bit about your landscaping. You should have an idea of what kind of lawn you have and what kind of care it needs. For instance, if you are looking for lawn care in Detroit, you probably have a cool-season lawn that requires more extensive care in the spring and fall. Conversely, if you live somewhere warmer, like Atlanta, you’ll need a warm-season grass specialist. Knowing the current state of your lawn as well as your expectations for your lawn service is critical to finding a lawn care service provider that works.
Ask for Recommendations
While looking in the yellow pages for a lawn care service will likely yield more than a few options, it generally ensures that you do more work than necessary. A better starting point — after you have determined your wants and needs — is asking friends, family members and neighbors for recommendations. If you notice that a house down the street has an impeccable lawn and uses a lawn care service, you might ask that neighbor for a contact. Then, you can perform online research, looking at other customer ratings and reviews, to narrow down your options even more.
Research Your Options
You should try to be as thorough as possible when researching your lawn care options because you don’t want to wind up with a service that doesn’t suit your needs. To start, it might help to know that there are three major varieties of lawn care provider:
Mow-and-go. As the name suggests, these lawn care services more or less provide simple, regular yard maintenance, like mowing the lawn, trimming hedges and blowing debris from hardscaping. The two- or three-person crews move as swiftly as possible, often servicing several houses in one day. This means you can usually find a professional service for a low price.
Chemical services. Slightly larger outfits than mow-and-go crews, these lawn care providers tend to provide more technical lawn care. While many can manage mowing and similar maintenance, they also administer pesticide herbicide and fertilizer according to your needs and local regulations. In this case, you shouldn’t opt for the cheapest provider, who might lack sufficient knowledge and do serious damage to your lawn.
Organic services. Organic lawn care is relatively new, but many services are beginning to pop up around the country. If you want to avoid using toxic compounds around your home, you need to search out an organic lawn care provider — but you should be wary of greenwashing tactics: “organic-based” and “green” do not necessarily mean chemical-free or safe.
With any lawn service you encounter, you should investigate their core philosophy, their practices and their prices. Then, once you have one or two services in mind, you can start making phone calls.
Get an Inspection, a Quote and a Plan of Action
Before you set up your lawn care schedule, you should meet with your lawn care provider in person. You might arrange for an inspection, which will give lawn care professionals a better idea of your precise needs and will result in a useful quote for services. If everything seems in line with your needs and wants, you can commit to the service providers you like the best and enjoy a healthy lawn into the future.