Landscape Design Care Tips for the Winter

With winter all but here, you have worthwhile things to do that can enhance the winterscape outside your windows, while you sit by the hearth. As a means of landscape design for your Bloomington or nearby home, we will be focusing on your hardscaping--the pavement, the back patio, the harder surfaces that you have had installed around your home. Our technicians in landscape design also install other sorts of hardscaping items like retaining walls, outdoor fire pits, pergolas and lighting. The key to maintaining their aesthetic appeal in wintertime is upkeep. Make sure that they are free of snow and ice so that they can be a focal point throughout the dead months. 

As your plants go through their dormant stages this winter, enjoy a landscape design with a little hardscaping. Your eyes will be drawn less to the trees and shrubbery that you possess and more to the pop that a master in landscape design has added to your property. With so many options as far as what you can do to enjoy your lawn and garden, why not set yourself up to enjoy it all while they sleep or are covered by snow and ice.

You will want to actively take care of your hardscaping during the winter months. If you are not vigilant you can run into a repair project or two after the thaw that could easily have been prevented. Stay on top of your salt usage. If you apply it but let it sit without removing it or the slush generated, it will eat away at or even stain any concrete, paver or stone that has been incorporated into your landscape design. Stay on top of it! In the grand scheme it does not take more than accumulated minutes for de-icer to do its work. Be there to get rid of it when needed. 

If you have had a nice and fancy patio installed, chances are that you have some metal containing furniture placed upon it. Do not leave these items outside to face winter. Take them inside, use them again as you knew them in the spring. A side effect of leaving these metallic items outside is that if they are under snow or ice the rust that emerges will also stain the hardscaping below it.

Installation is what matters most regarding your hardscaping and how it deals with winter. A winter surviving landscape design of this sort will need a good solid base and options for drainage. Snow and ice accumulate, mass, ultimately melting. The melt should not pool or sit on the surface of your hardscaping only to refreeze. A landscape design installed via hardscaping professionals should be set up adequately to allow this to occur. 

If you would like more information on our landscape design skills in Bloomington, call Advanced Irrigation at 612-599-8675, or you can contact us and get a Free Estimate.

Keep Your Landscape Looking and Feeling Cool With Shady Trees

When planting a shade tree, many do not put enough thought into just where and how a shade tree should be added. There are two major things to consider. The first is that you will want to consider planting it somewhere “inland”—streets representing water—and not on the very edge of your property. If you plant shade trees near a street or at a point where municipalities will likely one day implement imminent domain and put a highway through your property, you run the risk of your tree being violated by power lines and the like. Right of way of overhead wires wreaks havoc on a tree, often to the point of eliminating its shading value. Our landscape design team is fully aware of this issue and would seek a location within your property where risk  is minimal.

A second problem involves just how your plant your shade trees. It is often thought to be elegant and regal to implement something of a platform or raised bed—surround by brick or stone—for a noble shade tree.

Problems can quickly arise. This raised bed, especially if it is built high enough to cover any of the trunk, will make life difficult for your shade tree. Soils will remain moist and not drain or feed the as it otherwise would in a standard planting situation. The soil will not aerate properly because it is compacted to that which encases it as well as the weight and understructure of the tree. Bugs and rodents will also find the area more appealing than they otherwise would, which tends towards damaged bark. These factors combine to rob your shade tree of nutrients, drying out and eventually killing your shade tree. It will be a slow death for your beloved tree. Trees grow slow and die slow. The process will start below the soil, near the trunk, working its way through the interior of the tree outward.  

Many lawns and landscapes are fully exposed to constant sun. If you wish to be part of and directly enjoy your property, perhaps in a hammock, sometime you just want to lay in the shade. Why not implement some shade trees into your landscape design? Advanced Irrigation can help you with your shade tree needs with some landscape design for your Minneapolis home. At Advanced Irrigation, our landscape designers are fully aware of just how and where to implement proper yard shading through shade trees. Season veterans all, our designers can assemble a perfect landscape design to please any and all.

If you would like more information on our landscape design skills in Minneapolis, call Advanced Irrigation at 612-599-8675, or you can contact us and get a Free Estimate.

Smart Irrigation Systems Save Water

No one wants an ugly, dry, brown yard. If you run a business, that large expanse cannot be all dried out and lifeless either. Lush green is definitely the preference. If you are wondering about irrigation systems in the Bloomington area, consider Advanced Irrigation. We are a company that believes firmly in the conservation of water and safe environmental practices in general. Our irrigation systems are water efficient by design.

Through the calculation and practice of evapotranspiration (ET), 20-50 percent savings of water (over a standard irrigation system set-up) can be achieved while keeping your lawn as healthy and alive as it has ever has been. The way evapotranspiration works is by taking the sum of evaporation from the soil and plant transpiration (process whereby grass and plants absorb water through the roots, giving off water vapor through pores).

The evapotranspirator (the grass) is monitored by a smart controller that is digitally in touch with a weather station (24/7) measuring current and pending conditions to calculate local evapotranspiration factors. The smart controller then operates based on those conditions rather than on a schedule. For example, there is no need to water the lawn if it is going to rain in three hours.

These irrigation systems will water your lawn or business property only to replenish the moisture that is needed based on those calculated plant and soil conditions. The smart controller is programmed with the precipitation rate, plant type, soil type, slope and sun/shade exposure and combines with the weather station data of temperature, humidity, wind and solar radiation. The factors then blend to create the irrigation system unleashing its water on your property. Live local data is combined with landscape information to calculate the ET. Your lawn or property ends up with healthier roots and a longer lifespan.  

The savings of water (and as a bonus, money) hover anywhere in the 20-50 percent range based on what would be used in a normal “scheduled” irrigation set-up. One study estimated 66 percent savings in water use.

If you would like more information on our irrigation systems in Bloomington and the surrounding areas, call Advanced Irrigation at 612-599-8675, or you can contact us to get a Free Estimate.