Landscaping Services In Cambridge, Ma - Commercial & Residential Landscape Company

Spring Clean-Up

After winter in Cambridge, your property probably looks rough. Dead leaves that got frozen under snow, branches everywhere from ice storms, and flower beds that look like disaster zones. Spring cleanup is basically getting everything back to zero so you can actually start growing things again.

We're talking about clearing out all that dead stuff, cutting back perennials that died back in winter, getting your mulch refreshed, and making sure your drainage is working right. Cambridge gets alot of rain in April and May, so if water isn't draining away from your building, you'll have bigger problems than just ugly landscaping.

The timing matters too. You can't just pick any random day in March. The grounds too frozen early on, but wait to long and you're doing cleanup while new stuff is trying to grow. Most Cambridge properties need this done sometime between late March and mid-April, depending on where you are. Properties near the river might need it earlier cause they warm up faster.

One thing people forget is checking for winter damage to plants and trees. Salt from the sidewalks kills stuff, and you won't know what survived until things start budding out. Sometimes we find whole sections of hedges that didn't make it and need replacing.

Fall Clean-Up

Fall cleanup is different than spring. In spring your fixing damage. In fall your preventing it. This means getting your property ready so it can handle whatever winter throws at it.

The leaves are the obvious part. Cambridge has tons of old trees (which is great except when your dealing with the leaves). If you don't get them up, they kill your grass underneath, clog your drains, and turn into a slimy mess. Properties around Brattle Street and in the Avon Hill area - all those big old trees mean serious leaf cleanup.

But it's more than just leaves. Your also cutting back plants for winter, protecting sensitive stuff that might not handle the cold, aerating lawns so they can breathe under snow, and doing a final mulch to protect roots from freezing and thawing cycles. That freeze-thaw thing kills more plants around here than straight cold does.

We usually do fall cleanup in two rounds. One in October for the early dropping trees, and one in November for everything else. Some properties near Harvard need three rounds because those oak trees hold onto there leaves forever.

Bi-Weekly Weeding

Here's the thing about weeds in Cambridge - they grow faster than the stuff you actually want. Especially in summer when we get those humid stretches, you can go from clean beds to weed jungle in two weeks easy.

Bi-weekly weeding means coming through every other week during growing season (basically May through September) and pulling weeds before they take over. It's boring work but it makes a huge difference in how your property looks.

The properties that skip regular weeding? You can tell. Weeds in the mulch beds, grass growing up through groundcover, dandelions everywhere in the lawn. It looks sloppy and tells everyone you don't maintain the place well.

Cambridge soil is pretty good for growing (which is why weeds love it), and we get enough rain that you can't just let things dry out and kill weeds naturally. You gotta pull them. Chemical treatments can help but nothing beats getting in there and removing the whole root system.

The other benefit of regular weeding is catching problems early. When we're in your beds every two weeks, we notice if plants are diseased, if somethings not draining right, or if new weeds are moving in that might need different treatment. Properties around Central Square see different weeds than properties near Fresh Pond - it just depends on what's in your specific area.

Some commercial property managers think they can have their regular maintenance crew handle weeding, but most building maintenance guys don't know plants well enough to tell weeds from ground cover. We've seen plenty of properties where someone pulled out all the creeping thyme thinking it was a weed.