The most important landscape service I perform would have to be Plant Health Care (PHC). I say this based on my experience of working with woody shrubs and ornamental tree over the past fifteen years. I started out in this trade as a plant health care specialist, even though I knew almost nothing about landscape pests and disease. My lack of knowledge gave me a voracious appetite to learn all I could about my new position. I was fortunate that my employer at the time believed in training, so we went to diagnostic walks, symposiums, and conferences where I could absorb knowledge. I was then able to take that knowledge and practice it daily. After seeing how ornamental plants, pests, and diseases work over a period of several years, I gained a really good working knowledge that I was able to use to serve my clients well.
Plant Health Care when practiced by a knowledgeable professional can prevent damage to ornamentals because you are proactively reacting to known problems to prevent them from becoming problems. For example, azalea when improperly sited get stressed. This leads to an attack from lacebugs, which discolors the leaves. initially this will not kill the plant, but over a period of time it will lead to the decline of the azalea. Proactively treating the leaves prevents the feeding of the lacebugs and prevents damage to the leaves. With an organic fertilizer with the treatment you are not only treating for the pest, but treating for underlying issues also.
I have been practicing plant health care for fifteen years now, and I use a science call phenology which helps me with the timing of pest and diseases issues. When you use science to your advantage you can be Lazer accurate with the timing of treatments which helps prevent damage and decline in the landscape. Landscape plants are expensive to replace, it is much cheaper to maintain landscape plants than replace them as they decline. First is the cost to remove the plant material, then the expense to replace the plants. The factor that many people don’t take in account is that landscape plants are not sold as mature plants. There is the time factor that comes into play, and how do you put a price on that? Did I mention the matching issue of new plants into a mature landscape and how that looks?
If you value your landscape, then I would like to offer you a FREE landscape Evaluation to discuss what plant health care looks like for your landscape. A typical landscape consists of five visits a growing season, three in the Spring, one in the Summer, and one in the Fall. Most of the pest and diseases issues occur in the Spring as the conditions become right. There are other pests that don’t develop until Summer, then a final treatment in the Fall for issues like mites on burning bush which prevents the Fall color we all enjoy. If this is something you would like to explore farther, then schedule an appointment for a FREE landscape Evaluation HERE.