Welcome to our October issue. I cannot believe we are entering the final months of this year and the biggest month is yet coming with the election. My guys being Hispanic, are mostly democrats and I am a republican, and much like most Hispanics, they are Catholic. I attend an Assembly of God church. Politics and Faith can be issues that divide people, and I refuse to let that happen. We have so much more than just politics in common. We all work hard for our families, we all want the opportunity to succeed, we want to be safe, laugh with friends and family and enjoy the life we are working so hard for. A good government, and there is much more to a good government than what I just mentioned, provides these opportunities. Each morning before I send the crews out, I pray for us that God would give us wisdom to work well for our clients and meet the problems that we will encounter with excellence. With the election approaching, I have also been praying that God would intervene in our election process. I pray that as a people, we would elect public officials that would rule over us with integrity, wisdom, and justice. Not one of my men disagrees with that prayer, and as mentioned we are a mixed bag of beliefs. There is ALWAYS common ground. As we move closer to the election, may we all seek that. I am as much your neighbor as you are mine. ( Luke 10:25-37, if you are interested)
I have clients that want land, and for the most part I find that finding useful land is tough unless you are in agriculture, raise animals or just enjoy space around you. I try to discourage large expansive lawns. Though the green is beautiful, it comes with a price, financially and environmentally . My client Terry was done with having lawn (though it was not much to begin with), and he was frustrated with his landscape. I saw several things with the landscape that made it a “nonfunctioning landscape,” especially aesthetically. The things I will discuss seem to be true of all large custom home landscapes, and these problems are compounded the larger the landscape becomes. It is my opinion, that by the time the owners get to the landscape, the budget is tight, especially if you are building your home. Therefore, with the landscape being one of the final things to complete homeowners tend to go with the lowest bid, which in the long run becomes the more expensive bid. It always costs more to redo something than to do it right from the start. This is not always true, and it was not true of Terry. There can be other reasons such as lack of experience on the landscape company’s part. Unfortunately, this is a pattern I am all too familiar with.
There are many things to be concerned about with property. For example, the irrigation might be stretched. I have talked about this many times before. If the landscape is supposed to have four irrigation valves but only has three or worse two, that is a serious problem. As the landscape matures and needs more water, the water is not there, and so the plants begin to be stressed and soon die. This is especially true in the hot summer months. If the landscape has a dry stream bed, it often looks more like cobble on the ground than a stream bed. Another issue in a large yard is that there are many areas not taken advantage of. This is what I want to talk about in this article. Because of the property’s size, Terry’s driveway is long. To not take advantage of all that “shoulder space” for plantings is a huge waste of space. As we all know, curb appeal is important. Look at the before picture. You will see that next to the driveway is a slope, and below the slope are the Oak Trees. We could build a retaining wall midpoint of the slope, backfill it with good soil, and create a planter bed that one could enjoy as they drive in or out. We could also continue that wall to the top where a nice landscape could be showcased. That is exactly what we did, and in a couple years it will look very inviting and give the home a nice curb appeal. Rather than just a big home, it will be an inviting and attractive home. It was hard work for my guys to dig down into the rocky ground, but it was necessary to create a strong footing. We do not want the wall to shift over the many years it will be there. It added cost to the job, however we all found value in it. A particularly good characteristic about working for Terry was that he trusted me. He could not picture what I was saying, and only had an idea from a small picture I showed him in the catalog. This is one of many reasons why I write; to demonstrate our creativity and quality of work. Trust is earned, and I seek to start earning it before we ever step foot on a client’s property. Trust is precious and priceless to me. It is one of the few things money cannot buy. The wall solved one of the problems – unused potential. Next issue we will discuss the dry stream bed and plant selection.
I was just informed that the magazine is broken up into two mailing routes, A and B. That means this month you will receive it, but the next issue, you will not receive it until the following month. If you want to receive it every month, all you need to do is call the office. Make sure you tell them that you read Executive Care’s articles, and you would appreciate receiving it monthly. Gardeners, I hope you have your Fall/Winter garden planted. This is my favorite garden. Most Fall gardens contain spinach, lettuce, Swiss Chard, broccoli, though I can never get a crown from them, and white and red cabbage. We have this month before potential frost in November, so I would encourage you to build cold frames now, and then just cover them over with sheet plastic when the temperatures start to drop. We use ¾” PVC schedule 40 and bend it over the garden boxes as our framework. Until next time, good gardening – Arthur