Choosing a Maintenance Service for your Garden

Often times the help of a trained professional is nesseccary either for their depth of knowledge or because the volume work in your garden is just too much to get through even for the experienced gardener among us. Canopy Design Studio assist our clients in connecting clients with the right professionals for their garden maintenance needs and below are a few tips on how to pick the right person for your job.

We provide guidance to clients and their gardeners for all our completed projects through our maintenance consulting service. We want to ensure the design intent for the matured garden is reached and the horticulturalist engaged for the work starts off with the right information from a design perspective. This might be as a one off hand over meeting at the completion of the project build, or hopefully a long term consulting agreement to guide the maintenance of the garden to its maturity and beyond.

Knowledge and Training

We encourage only engaging horticulturalists for garden maintence services. ‘Garden maintenance services’ can be a very broad term that almost anyone can slap on the side of their ute, but to be a trained horticulturalist means your garden service provider has a level of professional training in horticulture. They will have a depth of knowledge beyond that of someone who can swing a hedger and push a mower. They will be proactive in prevention of pests and diseases, keep maintenance moving towards the mature garden vision of the original design, and troubleshoot when things aren’t going to plan. You should expect to be paying $75+ an hour for an experienced gardener, which will pay itself back in multiples with reduced maintenance issues and well planned maintenance schedules for each season.

Experience

Experience providing garden services over a number of years will mean your garden service providor will have seen many cycles of typical conditions in your local area, be familiar with what works and what doesn’t and know the local climate. Expereience with local soil types and local pests and diseases goes a very long way in garden maintenance. Ask your potential service provide the address of some gardens they maintain regularly and references of their clients.

Equipment and Connections

Your service providor will likely have an array of equipment to carry out specialist tasks like small tree pruning, mowing, irrigation repairs. Simply seeing how they look after their machines and equipment is an easy first check on what to expect of their level of quality work, sharp secatuers (but likely well worn) and a clean mower speak volumes for a quality horticulturalist. Quality equipment also shows the investment they are making in their business and the quality of their work.

Conversly, knowing when to bring in a specialist is also the tell tale sign of someone who has the right experience. In the years I worked ‘on the tools’ I always used a trained consulting arborist for tree inspections and a trained ‘climbing arborist’ for tree pruning that required anything past a good hand saw. This reduced the need for specialist equipment and training and reduced safety issues for myself and the team eliminating work by us that would be infrequent and high risk. You might also find your local horticulturalist will outsource things like lawn mowing so they can focus on the gardening proper. This outsourcing works to the clients advantage but having a focused horticulturalist who isn’t trying to be a jack of all trades, but oversees the quality of their sub-contractor’s work.