Articles by The Amateurs Digest

One aspect of being based in Western Australia that local landscaping companies have to contend with is the hot, dry climate and the subsequent need to advise clients about the pros and cons of having such weather. Specifically, there will be many plants that either thrive or struggle in Western Australia’s climate and as such it is the former that landscapers will wish to focus on when selecting plants for any landscape design that has been asked for by their clients.

Another crucial aspect of Perth landscapes that professional landscapers in Western Australia will advise clients on is how to maintain their gardens. Those gardens will have long hours of sunlight, extreme heat, and negligible rainfall during the summer months, so maintaining them properly will be key to their thriving rather than struggling. Here are seven tips that landscapers based in Western Australia are likely to pass on to their clients.

Do As Much Maintenance As You Can In The Mornings

This tip is as much for your benefit as it is for your plants. Rather than expose yourself to extreme heat during the long, hot afternoons, it is better if you get an early start and do your maintenance tasks first thing in the morning when it is cooler. In addition, by watering when it is cooler, plants will benefit more as less moisture will evaporate due to temperatures being lower at that time of day.

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Whilst landscapers have great skills when it comes to designing the layout of a landscaped garden, their knowledge also extends to matters related to horticulture. By that, we are talking about them knowing which plants are suitable within a design, and the conditions which are best suited for each one.

If they did not have that knowledge, whilst they might initially create a great-looking garden, in time it would fail due to plants not growing, lawns looking discoloured due to poor drainage, and any other of the hundreds of other problems that can befall gardens. Thankfully, most landscapers are reputable and will ensure any landscape design they create will produce a garden that is an aesthetic joy, and that everything that grows within that garden will thrive.

A garden that thrives is only possible if the soil within it is suitable for the plants that grow there which brings us to one of those specific areas of knowledge that landscapers have. Knowing the types of soil that exist within a garden, and, where necessary, what soil needs to be added to allow the plants that are planned for it to have the best chances of growing healthily, is highly important.

Although we cannot cover every possibility, we have highlighted below some soil types that you might find in your garden and their various facets. This should allow you to compare them to ascertain which is most suited to your garden and your plans for it.

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You might be sure that the business of landscaping does not normally venture into the world of psychology, but it can do. Indeed, when planning a landscaping project, one of the objectives given by the client might be that the landscaping created provides a calming influence with a space for quiet meditation, for example.

Another area where psychology and the landscaping business could be intertwined is on a landscaper’s website. When websites are being designed, the assumption is often that it is merely a mix of technical elements that make the website function and aesthetics when it comes to the website’s appearance. Both certainly apply, but psychology can also be used to make the website’s performance optimal.

What we are talking about here is not some dark art that hypnotizes people into zombies who pick up the phone and call a landscaper. Nor are we suggesting that black-hat tactics are employed within a landscaping business website, such as annoying pop-ups and scripts that make it impossible to click away with ease.

Instead, we are talking about psychological triggers, many of which are unknown to most people, including landscapers, and are often classified as’secrets’. These psychological secrets can be incorporated into the website design of a landscaping business and help that website achieve its aims. As for what some of those psychological secrets are.

Psychology Secret #1 – Clarity

One of the prime objectives of your website’s design is to avoid any risk of confusing visitors. For this reason, your website should have an uncluttered layout, clear calls to action, a simple menu and navigation system, and above all else, avoid using landscaping jargon and terminology that only landscapers would recognize and comprehend. Most of all, give the searcher what they are looking for.

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There is a simple truth to successful landscaping that every landscaper should be aware of. That truth has nothing to do with how you position features within the design. Nor does it even relate to how much or how little you spend on the project.

We will not keep you in suspense any longer and reveal to you that the success of any landscaping project is highly reliant upon the health of the soil underneath. Hopefully, you have not rolled your eyes, nor sighed, nor, we hope, are you planning to click away thinking that soil has nothing to do with any landscaping design you are planning because the fact is it does.

If the soil in which you are going to be planting bushes, shrubs, trees or even a new lawn is not up to standard then you are heading for some difficulties and disappointments. That soil may have insufficient nutrients to sustain anything you plant in it, its consistency might be unsuitable for landscaping, it could have poor drainage, and in the worst-case scenario, it may even contain toxins, which are dangerous to plants, animals, and most worryingly, humans. The easiest solution for helping grass grow is to have the area go through the vertimowing process.

Rather than dwell on the worst of what could happen if your soil is unhealthy, we prefer to highlight some ways in which you can ensure that the health of your soil is sufficient for you to plan, implement and enjoy your landscaping design. With that being the case, here are 5 tips concerning soil health that every landscaper should be able to follow without too much difficulty.

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For any landscape design or garden, the health of the grass, flowers, bushes, and shrubs within them rely on many things, but perhaps more than anything, it is the soil they are planted in. Regardless of how large or small any landscaping project you are undertaking is, one thing they have in common in order to exist is to be located on soil that is healthy and can provide plants living in it with nutrients.

Property maintenance and landscaping experts told us having healthy soil is something that some landscape designers and gardeners overlook as they become preoccupied with deciding what features to include and what the layout is going to be. Whilst each of them, and the many other elements of a landscaping project are important, they are but nothing if the soil underneath is lifeless and worse, toxic.

One point to note is that healthy soil is about more than just what all the plants are going to be rooted in, important though it may be. In addition, soil has other important roles which include, drainage, the prevention of erosion, and they are also the base that support features within a landscape design such as walls, pathways, and decking.

As you can see the success of any landscape design is very much reliant on the soil, so the next step is to discover how exactly we can ensure that the soil underneath is the healthy soil that we need and stays that way. Here are 5 ways that can be achieved.

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Only you will know how much local competition your garden maintenance business has, but even if there is only one other company in your area, you will still have potential customers of yours signing up with that competitor. If the competition is fierce, then you must do all you can to have an edge over those other garden maintenance companies, and according to an expert SEO company, the best way to achieve this is ranking high on Google.

With your website coming out on top whenever a potential customer searches for solutions relating to garden maintenance, if you have effective SEO in place then it is your website those searching will see, and not those of your competitors. Now, that might sound like an ideal scenario, but is not one that you can achieve in one day, one week, and even getting to the top of Google within a month takes some doing.

SEO, and trying to rank the pages of your website for a range of appropriate keywords, is a long-term project that takes a lot of planning, plenty of effort, and a strategic approach to every element of that project. This is why the vast majority of business owners employ others to do it all for them so that they can focus on running their business.

When we say ‘others’, there are options as to who you entrust with the management of your SEO campaign, but if you want it done professionally and wish to see sustainable results with regards to your rankings on Google, then an SEO agency is the only real solution. Here are some of the reasons why that is the case.

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Maintaining a healthy work environment often means taking action in several ways. One would be to hire a professional cleaning company to ensure that you and your staff operate so that cleanliness and health are part of your daily routine.

In addition, and with recent events still a significant focus around the world, many of us are learning to work in new ways, and part of that is driven by the increasing need for hygiene, not only for our well-being but for the well-being of our colleagues and customers.

Providing a healthy and hygienic environment for its staff and customers is essential in these uncertain times. It can be the difference between a business surviving or not.

Here are three simple but highly effective ways of helping your business stay healthy.

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