How To Care For Your Lawn: Maintenance Tips

For property owners, a healthy lawn goes beyond aesthetics. It serves as a source of pride, offering a welcoming environment and potentially increasing the value of their home or building.

The best lawn care companies provide various services to help meet their customers’ needs. For some clients, that means a comprehensive lawn care program. For others, a simple lawn maintenance plan suffices.

Professional lawn care providers must understand the difference between lawn maintenance and lawn care to identify opportunities to expand from a simple mowing service to providing full-service lawn care needs. 

What Is Lawn Care?

Lawn care addresses the overall health of a lawn in terms of color, appearance, and soil health.

Lawn care can include:

• Soil testing

• Pest control

• Pre-emergent weed and crabgrass control

• Dethatching

• Aeration

• Irrigation systems and sprinkler systems

• Pruning shrubs and trees

• Sod installation

• Tree service

• Landscape design

• Mulching

Regular lawn care helps protect against pest and weed infestations while producing healthy turf growth and an attractive landscape.

Companies that provide these comprehensive services enjoy profitable business opportunities as they require regular, more time-consuming processes than simple lawn maintenance.

Customers expect more from lawn care. They pay for both prevention and aesthetics.

And because lawn care involves applying fertilizers and pesticides, some states require technicians to obtain a license. 

Proper lawn care requires a much deeper commitment to the landscape’s health than lawn maintenance, which we’ll discuss next.

What Is Lawn Maintenance?

Lawn maintenance is a series of routine services offered by a lawn care company or landscaping service that generally addresses simple cosmetic needs.

This typically includes:

• Grass seeding

• Lawn fertilization

• Mowing

• Trimming and edging

• Weed control

• Leaf removal

• Hardscape cleaning, such as snow removal or debris removal from walkways and patios

Lawn maintenance requirements change based on the season and climate. Mowing may only be required seven or eight months annually in New York versus year-round in Florida. Other states with unpredictable climates, such as Virginia, could require more flexible responsiveness based on when and if the cold weather comes.

Basic lawn maintenance tools include lawn mowers, hoses, weed pullers, hand shears or electric trimmers, rakes, and fertilizer spreaders–the same equipment homeowners use for DIY lawn work.

Now, let’s look at the differences between lawn care and lawn maintenance.

Lawn Care vs. Lawn Maintenance

Lawn care and lawn maintenance often get used interchangeably, but they refer to very different types of service.

Lawn care services and lawn maintenance work in partnership with many landscaping customers. Without proper, regular maintenance, lawn issues can quickly spiral out of control.

Each of these services leads to a better, cleaner appearance for a lawn, but understanding and offering both puts a lawn care company in a competitive advantage, heightens customer expectations, and leads to increased opportunity.

A comprehensive lawn program considers both care and maintenance to improve the long-term health and look.

What Type of Services Should Your Lawn Care Business Offer?

Whether you’re a new lawn care business or a seasoned lawn care pro reevaluating your services, your company should provide both care and maintenance.  

Start with basic lawn maintenance services such as bi-weekly mowing, fertilizing, and trimming. Once trust builds, offer optional services such as aeration, irrigation, and pest control. Talk to customers to understand their needs. Some simply want a lush lawn, while others want to enhance their outdoor living space.

Conduct market research to discover what other landscape companies in your area offer. Find out what’s missing, and fill that void.

Learn More About Starting and Running a Lawn Care Business

Homeowners and commercial property owners want a wide variety of services from their lawn care partners. For some, basic weekly mowing services suffice. Others look for a lawn care professional who provides a wide range of lawn services to solve their home improvement needs. 

Whether you’re a small, family-owned shop or a growing franchise, offering the right services to meet your customers’ needs leads to sustained success.

Learn more about starting and growing your lawn care business by checking out the FieldRoutes blog. There, you can learn what it takes to get started, how much to charge for services, and how best to utilize FieldRoutes’ lawn care software to expand quickly and grow revenue.