Landscape Maintenance
Environmental Construction Inc. offers the option of complete landscape maintenance and gardening
Garden Stewardship Program
We understand that caring for your landscape and areas outside your home is time-consuming
and a constant project. Our full-service garden stewardship program is available
to help with all those maintenance details that overwhelm you. Now you can relax and enjoy
a beautiful garden all year.
- Power-washing decks and walkways
- Raking and disposing of leaves and pine needles
- Spreading bark, mulch, and top-dressing
- Planting and transplanting
- Weeding
- Proper pruning
- Some outdoor pest control
- Controlling moss build-up and algae
- Cleaning gutters
- Lawn care (hydro-seeding, thatching. etc.)
With Environmental Construction as your steward, you no longer have to wonder if the outdoor lighting needs to be checked, the trees have been fertilized, or if the sprinkler system is working correctly. Contact us today for more information about how this full-service Garden Stewardship Program could make your life so much easier.
Yard and Garden Clean-Up
You can have a beautiful yard any time of year with our yard clean-up service. Yard clean up is most effective when armed with the right tools. Landscape maintenance equipment includes shuffle hoes for weeding, lawn edger to re-shape and recapture the lawn, chain saws and hand pruners, rakes and shovels, that are backed up with pressure washers, backpack power blowers, and dump bed trucks for debris hauling. We can clean and maintain your garden landscape with the attention to detail that many companies cannot.
From edible gardens to exquisite oriental gardens, we provide the maintenance your garden needs. Contact us today to discuss the garden service that will give your garden landscape the look you want. We can upgrade your garden for that special occasion or provide a long-term landscape maintenance program.
For more information about our garden services, see our Yard and Garden Clean-Up page.
Pruning Service
For proper growth it is important use the right techniques when pruning roses, tomatoes, grape vines, clematis, etc. Most plants are unable to fulfill their real potential without regular and proper pruning. Pruning is best done by a professional garden landscape maintenance company.
Environmental Construction is proud to offer our "Proper Pruning Service" to those
clients who realize the benefit of correct pruning with landscape maintenance. Our
landscaping maintenance staff has been thoroughly trained in the art and science
of pruning trees, bushes, and plants. We consider the natural shape of each plant
and we work toward pruning techniques that compliment the plant's natural shape.
Incorrect pruning of bushes, shrubs, trees, and plants can damage their growth and
your landscape investment.
Pruning Service - Roses, Bushes, and Trees
Although plants can be pruned at any time of year, winter is often the best
time for pruning roses, bushes, and trees. We cannot over-emphasize the importance of proper pruning.
How we prune bushes, trees, and shrubs
Our pruning service involves hand working each tree, shrub, or hedge using heavy duty Bypass Pruners
We start by removing all dead wood from each plant to assure available nutrients
are channeled to living wood. Our next step in the pruning process is to look for
and remove branches that “cross over” each other. By removing the cross over branches,
we assure that they will not grow together and open unnecessary wounds where diseases
can enter the plant. We then look for redundant growth patterns and eliminate many
of the branching layers that prevent light and air from reaching the inner branches
of the plant.
Opening each plant in a balanced fashion, allows light to reach the inner branch
crotches where dormant lateral buds reside. Only then do we go back and cut terminal
buds by hand, or power shearing methods that force the inner dormant lateral buds
to pop. This is a great way to keep your shrubs smaller and full of new growth.
Pruning will control growth
We see far too many examples from gardeners who start by shearing in an effort to place speed ahead of plant health. While this may initially result in lower garden maintenance bills, the resulting burst of growth in the very outer shrub layer (caused by first tier lateral bud growth as opposed to the inner lateral bud growth) makes maintaining plant and hedge size difficult.
Transplanting Trees
If a tree needs to be moved, it needs to be done carefully and correctly. We know when it is a good time to transplant trees and shrubs and how to protect the plant's health. ECI has the right equipment which allows us to get the job done quickly and without harming the landscape around the tree. We also offer tree removal when necessary.
Read about the process we take when transplanting trees and shrubs.
Lawn Care
Environmental Construction does not currently offer lawn mowing services. We advise our customers that grass lawns generally require 4 to 6 hours of direct sunlight every day to be healthy. To read about lawn establishment and ongoing maintenance requirements, check out the Country Green web site at countrygreen.com.
Garden Weeding
Garden maintenance, mulching, and fertilizing by Environmental Construction Inc. is key to a beautiful garden.
In the Seattle area, nothing beats regular garden weeding. Keeping your garden relatively weed-free without the over-use of herbicides, involves a strong sense of timing. Weeding is especially important in the spring before flowers turn to seed. Best garden weeding months are April through August. Eliminating weeds before they flower and turn to seed in the spring will greatly help you manage your garden throughout the rest of the year. We recommend weekly visits in the spring followed by monthly visits in the summer, so that our technicians can stay ahead of your weed growth cycles.
A word about herbicide use: Due to the long term environmental impact, we have significantly reduced our reliance on long lasting pre-emergent herbicides. We urge you to help protect our beautiful Pacific Northwest, the Puget Sound and our streams and lakes by joining us in the limited use of herbicides.
When all else fails, and complete weed control is absolutely necessary, we can refer you to a licensed herbicide applicator who can work with you. Our garden stewards only use natural methods of weed control.
Spreading Garden Mulch
Planting beds can be mulched with old fashioned screened bark mulch or with screened composted mulch. Both help hold moisture and help eliminate weed seed germination.
We recommend the composted mulch because mulches made of raw wood need to decompose before the nutrients locked in the wood fiber can be absorbed by plants. The process of decomposition takes time and the required micro organism population that causes decomposition will rob essential plant nutrients in the process. Composted mulch not only adds nutrients to your soil immediately, but is a terrific use of recycled yard waste.
Top-dressing your planting beds with screened composted mulch will benefit your planting beds in three ways:
- Composted mulch helps hold moisture thus minimizing water runoff around each plant.
- Composted mulch helps control soil erosion, and
- Top-dressing your planting beds with screened composted mulch can be helpful at controlling weed seed germination.
Environmental Construction Inc. offers anything from a one-time yard and garden clean-up to full-service and on-going Garden Stewardship. Just let us know what you need. We want to care for your outdoor space, without hurting your budget.