How to look after a Southern California landscape
Most crews are doing exactly what they were taught. The trouble is that the habits this industry standardised on were built for lawns and clipped hedges, and a native or Mediterranean garden does not survive them. These are the practices that keep one alive, written for the people holding the tools.
La mayoría de las cuadrillas hace exactamente lo que le enseñaron. El problema es que esas costumbres se hicieron para el césped y los setos recortados, y un jardín nativo o mediterráneo no las aguanta. Estas son las prácticas que lo mantienen vivo, escritas para quien trae la herramienta en la mano.
This work is worth more than mowing
Mow and blow is a commodity. There is no barrier to entry, so there is always somebody willing to do it for ten dollars less, and the only way to compete is to go faster. Published rates around Long Beach put a maintenance visit at roughly $56 to $105, or about $100 to $200 a month on a typical residential property.
Skilled horticultural maintenance is not the same product and does not carry the same price. Market rates for visits that include seasonal pruning, mulch and proper irrigation management run nearer $140 to $400 a visit, or $400 to $650 a month. Same property. Different work, and different knowledge.
The client most willing to pay it is the one who has just spent twenty, fifty or a hundred thousand dollars putting the garden in. At four hundred a month, protecting a fifty thousand dollar installation costs under one percent of it a year. Nobody has to be talked into that. They mostly do not know it is on offer, because almost nobody offers it.
The knowledge is the barrier, and the barrier is the point. A crew that can tell an evergreen sedge from a dormant deergrass, and explain to a client why one is cut back and the other is not, is doing work that cannot be undercut by whoever is cheapest this month.
Let's Create Something Extraordinary
From concept to completion, we are committed to crafting outdoor spaces that feel like an extension of your home, a place where you can relax, gather, and connect with nature.