With people spending more time at home, now is the perfect time to invest in your outdoor living spaces. While an increase in property value is one benefit of a quality landscape, the most important benefits are in the health and well-being of you and your family. Beautiful and functional outdoor living spaces help one relax and enjoy the great outdoors.
An outdoor fireplace or fire pit can help extend the seasons you are able to enjoy your backyard.
An in-ground swim spa provides the opportunity for relaxing outdoors in the dead of winter.
An outdoor kitchen and patio dining area provides a gathering place for guests, especially when heated with an outdoor fireplace, fire pit, or portable gas heaters
Retaining walls can be used to expand the usable space in your yard, as well as provide beautiful backdrops to plantings.
Acadia Landscape is standing by to offer an estimate and design help with your landscape. Contact us by phone or email and schedule your estimate.
Acadia Landscape Co. has operated on a continual basis over the past twenty years, meeting the landscaping needs of thousands of homeowners in East Tennessee who desired to transform their yards into something they could truly enjoy with their friends and families. Over the past few years, the demand for our services has grown exponentially due to the pandemic. Throughout this entire ordeal, we have remained committed to helping our clients—our friends and neighbors—make their backyard dreams a reality.
Today, we are pleased to continue to offer our entire spectrum of landscaping and hardscaping services, including turnkey landscape design/build services to ensure your project is planned and excuted in the most professional manner. Acadia Landscape Co. has earned a reputation for quality work, fast turnarounds, and a full warranty. With licensed landscape architects and designers on staff, our team is committed to delivering a successful project that will last a lifetime.
Take advantage of a plant's natural winter dormancy to get those new trees and shrubs in the ground. Most trees, shrubs and plants go dormant during the coldest months of the year, with little in root or foliage growth occurring from Dec-Feb. It's the perfect time to plant your new garden, privacy screen, or add specimen trees to your landscape.
In addition to the natural lull in growth, winter is the perfect time to plant because the ground tends to stay moist. This allows the new plant's soil rootball to better integrate with the native soil adjacent to the rootball. The small air gaps that will occur during the planting process will have a chance to disperse and rise through the soil as rainwater leaches down. The plant will "settle in" better over the winter months, and come Spring, you'll see faster and more vibrant growth.
Last, planting trees and shrubs in the winter will usually require far less irrigation as the plants establish themselves. The colder temperatures mean rainwater evaporates more slowly, leaving the ground damper for longer periods of time.
So, you’ve decided to get your landscape or hardscape project underway and it’s time to choose someone to do the job. Before you do, here are some much needed considerations to keep in mind. First off, when is the best time of year to do my project?
I hear this concern all the time from my clients and there seems to be endless discussion about it—it’s confusing at best. Truth is, any time is fine. Professional landscape companies put landscaping and hardscapes in year-round. Planting nursery stock of any kind is just as easy in the heat of summer or the dead of winter and so it goes for hardscapes as well. Having said that, keep YOUR needs in focus for project timing. If you really want to enjoy your new outdoor living sanctuary in all the glory of spring as life bursts forth, then you need to make contact with a company in the winter. The planning process, contracting, and execution all take a collective and substantial amount of time. These things don’t happen overnight.
The next step, choosing a company, can be the most difficult part of the entire process and one needs to be watchful. Make sure the company is a recognized professional in its field, go to their website, check their references, and observe their work on Houzz, Pinterest, Facebook and others. These days it’s easy to quickly see who you’re dealing with and if they’re a good fit for you. Now that you’ve done your homework, make the call and prepare to meet your representative.
What should you expect from your representative? Age is not the determining factor here. I’m 57 years old and I’ve been at this for nearly 40 years but I know many young men and women in this field who are absolutely brilliant at what they do. The representative must first be very attentive and focused on your needs, desires, and expectations. Never forget that at the end of the day you are the one who will live with the results. They should offer creative alternatives and embellishments, often times unknown to the client, which can enhance the end result. They should also be committed to telling you what you need to know, NOT what you want to hear. Insist on complete transparency throughout the process. This leads to a much more productive working relationship and an outcome that exceeds expectations. The final consideration is cost.
Cost-it’s important and nearly always a concern for every good steward. There are companies out there that charge very high prices for what they do and there are those who, even to the clients, seem uncomfortably cheap. Make no mistake about it, there is a direct correlation between price and professional work and a sizeable percentage of the work we do here at Acadia Landscaping is fixing other people’s mistakes. When you need a design, or plan, for your project, you can expect to pay a reasonable design fee that should be refundable against any work the company does for you. Discuss the expected costs with your designer. What good is a designed project that is not affordable—this is all part of real transparency. Keep in mind too, there is nothing enjoyable about a completed project that is disappointing to you because someone failed to honestly say what real costs were involved for meeting your needs and expectations. Always insist on “hard” proposals. Professionals know what a turnkey project costs at the beginning, not the end. Granted, some costs can’t be foreseen by anyone, but just short of those, you should always know your project costs before you begin. Now we come to execution!
Know going in that execution of this kind of work is difficult, grueling, and at the mercy of the weather. When it rains on Monday and Tuesday, don’t expect your company to operate an 8,000 pound piece of equipment at your home on Wednesday. Remember, they want to get the project completed as much as you. They should run a clean site! Nothing burns me up more than a sloppy construction site. I understand there are bulk materials needed but they can be neatly used and placed for the duration. You have to come and go freely to live your life during the projects execution phase and your company has to hold those needs in the highest regard.
When you’ve genuinely given thought to all these considerations, you’re moving forward with your eyes wide open and your about to experience the joy and excitement that will accompany the completion of a dream come true for you. Just one more example of how good planning always begins “From the Ground-Up!”
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