Plants, shrubs and flowers thrive when the weather isn't extreme – not too hot and not too cold, not too wet and not too dry. It is important to understand the best seasons for landscaping in Gainesville, because although we do plant landscapes year-round, there are seasons when it is better than others, and fall is certainly one of those seasons. 

For many novice landscapers, selecting the right type of plants and the right time to install them can be confusing. Whether your objective is to improve curb appeal, create a space for entertaining, or minimize your maintenance, your effort and investment needs to thrive in order to succeed.  To make sure it's the most successful, it is important you know all the facts and particulars about your soil conditions, desired plants, irrigation needs, sun/shade needs, and fertilization / pest control requirements.

Factors also include the amount of sunlight that will be projected in the morning or the afternoon? Or do your landscaping beds get any sun at all? And, how good is the drainage of your landscaping beds during thunder storms?  Too much sun, not enough sun, too much water, not enough water, and poor soil conditions all contribute to a failed garden design.  Knowing these perspectives and plant needs heelps our team design a landscape that will thrive with minimal miantenance and special care.

Though many of us get the planting bug on the first beautiful day of spring, it is not necessarily the best time to start your landscaping project.  Unexpected heat waves, late cold spells, or excessive drought conditions can place stress on newly installed plants, shrubs and flowers.

Also, if you plant during the latter part of spring or summer, you will need to pay a little more attention to making sure your plants withstand the heat and humidity.  The hot and humid days of summer place more stress on your plants, shrubs and flowers, and therefore will require routine watering, and a little extra TLC.

As fall lends itself to cooler temperatures and lower humidity, it is the most favorable and most comfortable time of the year to embark on your Gainesville, Florida landscaping project.  Planting trees, shrubs, and perennials in the fall allows for them to establish their root system longer in milder seasons (winter is also a milder season in Florida) so they are strong when spring arrives.   More developed root systems help plants perform better in the summer, more so than those planted in the spring. Perennials will flourish and be ready to bud.  Fall is also the best time of the year to divide perennials and transplant them too, such as Irises, Lillies, and  others.

If you are still set on planting in the spring rather than fall, make sure you do so with a funtioning irrigation system, as spring brings our driest season of the entire year.  

As the fall holidays approach, it is a good time to plant cold-tolerant annuals like Diasica, Pansies, Violas, Nemesia and Kale - the flowering cabbage that seems to be installed in every landscape bed in October.

As with any home improvement project, it is always best to consult with a professional who specializes in Ganesville Landscape Rennovations. If you would like assistance with your Gainesville landscaping project, please call us at (352) 378-5296 or fill out our contact us form at the top of the page. 

This is the perfect perennial for Gainesville lawns because of it's tolerance for hot temperatures, dry, and sandy soils, and it provides color throughout the warm months in our area.

It blooms repeatedly with cheerful flowers that are yellow or orange, depending on the variety. It makes a great ground cover since each plant will grow over time to form a clump that can reach up to four feet wide. This clumping habit also makes bulbine a great passalong plant for other Gainesville gardeners, as well.

The succulent, grass-like foliage grows to about a foot tall, while the flower stalks typically reach two feet, dancing above the leaves throughout the summer months.

Bulbine was named a 2006 Plant of the Year by the Florida Nursery Growers and Landscape Association and has continued to increase in popularity since.

Bulbine will grow best if it is planted in a spot that receives full sun and has well-drained soil, though it can be grown in a site that gets shade for part of the day. Once established, bulbine is very drought tolerant.

Deadheading and removal of spent stalks will encourage the plants to produce more flowers, but it is not necessary. Our Gainesville landscape management plans include this if you're interested in discussing with our team. 

If you'd like to see more curb appeal, and possibly even a Bulbine, in your Gainesville landscaping - give us a call or text at (352) 378-5296 or fill out the contact us form at the top of the page. 

Pineapple guava plants, also called feijoa plants, are large shrubs or shaped ornamental trees that add interest to Gainesville, Florida landscapes in more ways than one. Their visual appeal created by this plant's grey-green foliage and showy warm-season flowers make it a wonderful specimen plant in any landscape Design. Additionally, the pineapple guavas produce delicious and edible fruit with a flavor similar to a pineapple. With a dense habit and a height and spread of 8 to 15 feet, these landscape pest- and disease-resistant evergreens are suitable for several uses within your lawn. 

Pineapple guava was named a Florida Garden Select plant in 2009 by the Florida Nursery Growers and Landscape Association. It can be grown anywhere in Florida and is even able to handle the salty soils near the coast and sandy soils in Alachua County.

The plants are versatile and easy to grow with an upright branching form, and can be pruned up into a tree-form by the right landscape professional. Fleshy white flower petals have showy red accents, contrasting nicely with the foliage, as you can see in the photo. The tasty fruit ripens in late fall.

The Master's landscaping installation team commonly uses them as a privacy hedge, specimen tree, or corner anchor plant for a bed. They are evergreen and look great year-round when properly irrigated, fertilized, and maintained. 

If this is a plant you would love to see in your Gainesville landscape design, call our office at (352) 378-5296 or fill out our online contact form at the top of the page so we can schedule a meeting to discuss how to add it into your garden design. 

The three big keys for successful Supertunias are: Sun, Water, and Fertilizers. These are the three things you must keep in mind to have the best performance from your Supertunias in your Gainesville, Florida yard.

All petunias want a full day of sun because the more shade they are planted in, the fewer flowers they can produce. Think of it this way, for Supertunias sun = energy – they need this energy to keep producing more flowers, because flowers require energy to produce. The more energy the plant has the better the flowering. We recommend AT LEAST 6 hours of full, hot sun a day for best results. So from 10:00am – 4:00 pm minimum for best results. With sun and Supertunias, more is almost always better!

The plants like consistent water. They can tolerate a little more or a little less, but the key is to be consistent. The more they receive their needed water on a regular basis the more reliable they are in producing new flowers. This is why things get dicey when someone forgets to water and plants become very dry, or if someone get carried away and makes the plant soggy – those extremes are harder for the plant to deal with than regular watering. When the plant is stressed by the extremes, they stop producing flowers and just try to survive – you never want your flowers to have to make that decision! Have a regular day every week that you water, and as the season progresses and you need to water more often, have a few regular days every week, always trying to be consistent. Irrigation set properly can really make this easy.

If sun = energy, and water must be consistent, then fertilizer = food. It is hard to get up each day and produce 50 new flowers without ever having breakfast. Think of how hard it would be to go to work without any food for a day or so. Fertilizer is essential for Supertunias to do well and they need fertilizer like we need food – everyday. So does that mean you need to fertilize every day? No. Because to a certain extent where your plants are located or planted has a big effect:

In Gainesville landscape beds, they have it easy, they have unlimited space to grow and if they can’t find the food they need they can send their little roots out farther to find it. Think of the average garden plot in your yard as a bank, there is almost always some water and some nutrients available for loan, so it provides a bit of a fudge factor when watering and fertilizing. As a result, plants planted in the ground can do with a bit less fertilizer and water than plants in containers.

Containers are a bit more complicated because in a pot the soil "bank" is gone. There is only so much room in a pot for soil and only so much water that can be held by the pot and saucer, and there is no place to go when fertilizer or water runs out. Also potting soil is usually an artificial soil that does not have all the nutrients and good qualities of garden soil. Potting soils make it necessary to provide ALL nutrients to plants, as most do not have nutrients already in them. So plants in containers need to be babied along by providing for their needs and that means regular watering and complete fertilizing.

If you would like to see Supertunias in your Gainesville Lawn, give us a call for a free landscape design including these great plants at (352) 378-5296 or emailing info@themasterslawncare.com.

Cuphea Allyson, or "Mexican Heather" is desired for its delicate, ever-blooming purple blossoms, glossy green foliage, heat tolerance, drought resistance, low maintenance and mounding, semi-trailing growth habit for Gainesville Landscape designs.

Allyson Mexican Heather is a multi-stemmed annual with an upright spreading habit of growth with dainty purple-pink tubular flowers. Its medium texture blends into the garden, but can always be balanced by a couple of finer or coarser plants for an effective composition. Heather is a relatively low maintenance plant, and is best cleaned up in early spring before it resumes active growth for the season. It is a good choice for attracting butterflies to your yard, and it has no significant negative characteristics.

Allyson Mexican Heather will grow to be about 24 inches tall at maturity, with a spread of 24 inches. Its foliage tends to remain dense right to the ground, not requiring facer plants in front.

This plant does best in full sun to partial shade. It does best in average to evenly moist conditions, but will not tolerate standing water. It is not particular as to soil pH, but grows best in rich soils.

Allyson Mexican Heather is a fine choice for Gainesville garden, but it is also a good selection for planting in outdoor pots and containers. With its upright habit of growth, it is best suited for use as a 'thriller' in the 'spiller-thriller-filler' container combination; plant it near the center of the pot, surrounded by smaller plants and those that spill over the edges.

If this is a plant you would love to see in your Gainesville landscape design, call our office at (352) 378-5296 or fill out our online contact form at the top of the page so we can schedule a meeting to discuss how to add it into your Gainesville landscape design.

Today I want to discuss a problem many Gainesville homeowners face in their lawn.

As we've brought up in several blogs, all you need for a fundamentally healthy lawn is the proper amount of the lawn's 3 basic needs: sun, water, and food (fertilizer.) If you have those three things, your grass will fill in by itself in time. If you don’t, it doesn’t matter how much time, effort, or money you throw at the problem, you will end up with that same bare spot under the tree.

Consider how much sun you need for grasses in Gainesville lawns:

• St. Augustine needs about 5-6 hours to establish itself. Once established, the St. Augustine will gradually acclimate to less light (which explains why your neighbor may have thick St. Augustine under their trees and you don’t).
• Zoysia is starting to become popular and has slightly higher light requirements than St.Augustine. We reommend 6 hours.
• Bahia and Bermuda both need closer to 7-8 hours of sunlight
• Centipede grass thrive in 5-6 hours of sunlight, similar to St. Augustine grass.

One solution to reducing shade on your lawn is trimming the tree's canopies, but this rarely increases the sunlight dramatically. How much it adds depends on your specific lawn and how low your limbs are hanging. 

If you have a shaded Gainesville lawn and have been fighting to keep grass, my solution is this: Embrace the shade. Why continue investing in sod that will never thrive? In my experience, fighting nature never results in a victory for me - trust me, I've tried.

There are simply too many appealing and low-maintenance plants that thrive in shade to keep fighting an uphill battle with grass. We can install low-maintenance shade plants, butterfly and hummingbird shade landscapes, and much more. It's just a matter of changing your perception that the shady area needs to be turf.

Even better than finally winning the war on having an attractive lawn, is Alachua County's Turf Swap Program. It will actually give you a rebate to do just that - trade in your struggling turf for Landscaping.  Click here to find out more.

If you have questions or concerns about your lawn, please don't hesitate to call us at (352)378-5296, fill out the form above, or email us at info@themasterslawncare.com. We would love to help. Your question may even be the next subject on our blog!

There is a Freeze Warning coming up in Northern Florida for this weekend. The current forecast is predicting overnight freezing temperatures for both Saturday and Sunday nights, which could result damage or Gainesville sprinkler systems and tender landscape plants. Here are some tips that will help minimize the harmful effects of low temperatures:

• Cover your sprinkler system's backflow preventer with protective covering and change settings like this. Upgrading your weather sensor to a rain/freeze sensor also protects your irrigation from running and leaving moisture to cause freeze damage on plants. 
• Cover your cold-sensitive plants (see list below) with sheets or blankets, but not plastic.
• Don't mow or use heavy equipment on your lawn if it is frozen or if there is frost present the following morning.

Most Common Cold-sensitive Gainesville landscaping plants*:

• Gold Mound Duranta
• Some Palms
• Philodendron
• Bird of Paradise
• Variegated Schefflera
• Some varieties of Ginger
• Hibiscus
• Firespike
• Plumbago
• Bougainvillea
• Lantana
• Croton
• Heather
• Hydrangea
• Oleander
• Butterfly bush
• Impatiens / Sunpatiens
• Warm Season Annuals

*This is just a list of the most common plants. If you have plants not on this list that are fruit bearing or of a tropical nature, it is recommended you protect them as well.

Being prepared and vigilant can help you protect and preserve the investment you’ve made in your Gainesville lawn and landscaping. A little work now will pay big dividends when you have a healthy lawn this coming Spring. 

The Master's Lawn Care is a Certified Gainesville Lawn & Ornamental Pest Control Business, and we want to help you get the best out of your lawn. Call us at 378-LAWN if we can be of any help.

Landscape Plants in Gainesville yards are often loved for the beauty they add to homes and businesses year after year. Perennial plantings are the majority of those landscaping plants. While not all perennials need time to look and do their best, this is a common enough phenomenon that there is an actual adage for it "The first year they sleep, the second year they creep and the third year they leap!"  But what does that really mean?

The First Year They Sleep

The time to plant in your Gainesville yard finally comes, so you hire a landscape company to design a beautiful landscape for you. It is beautiful and you couldn't be more proud - if only the plants were a little bit larger. You've waited 3 months to see them grow and nothing happens.  The plants just sit there, taunting you, seemingly content to laze the summer away without growing much bigger. 

Now if you had a tool to see underground, you could take a look and see that while it's true that nothing much is happening above ground, there is a lot happening down under.  Roots are what's happening.  Some perennials spend most of their energy the first year creating a great root system, instead of growing a lot on top, and that is the basis for great plants in the long run.  Well-developed roots are better at finding and taking up both water and nutrients, not to mention anchoring the plant in place and keeping the plant healthy which translates into better yard pest and disease resistance, too. 

The Loropetalum is a classic example of a Gainesville landscape plant that sleeps, creeps and then leaps. I've planted several of these at my current home, but they were mostly in a holding pattern their first season.  Now that they are going into their second summer in my yard, I'm seeing more flowers and stems, but I am expecting them to do something even more spectacular next year.

The Second Year They Creep

In a perennial's second year, even though you can't see them, the roots are growing bigger and stronger.  You'll notice that there is more foliage and flowers than the first year.  That's important because the leaves are the "engine" for the plant -- they absorb the sun's rays which create food and energy for the plant. Although their growth is appreciated in year two, it still isn't at the level most hope for if planted for privacy or screening. 

The Third Year They Leap

In their third year, most shrubs and trees burst into full glory.  The roots are now very well-established, they are growing strong.  It is almost as if the plants do 2 years of growing in one year to make up for the sleeping and creeping!  It'll leave you thinking "Now THIS is what I was talking about!"  

One of landscape contractors' biggest struggles is planning for a "wow" effect right after everything is initially installed, while also planning for the growth of the plants not to be crowded in 3-5 years as they grow to maturity. If compensating for full growth of all the plants, the initial yard renovation can look bare and underwhelming. However, planting the beds to look full when first installed will give your lawn maintenance service nightmares of trimming to keep everything from growing together and looking like a jungle in a couple years. The key is balance in having immediate appeal while also planning ahead for growth and maintenance. 

One of the biggest keys to our success is in the initial appointment to discuss your expectations for your yard, and following with the desires for plant sizes and ongoing maintenance of the landscape. If this consultation is something you think you could benefit from, please call our office at (352) 378-LAWN (or text us at 352-378-5296) for a landscape proposal at your earliest convenience. 

8. How many projects do you have going at one time? Generally, the more employees a company has, the more projects it will be able to run concurrently. Asking this question will open up a conversation about the number of employees the company has and how multiple ongoing projects are handled. A follow-up question is, Will the person assigned to manage your project be managing other projects at the same time?

Ornamental Grasses such as Muhly grass, Fountain grass, and Pampas grass are some of the most common plants in Gainesville Landscaping due to their ability to withstand drought. However, they are commonly left completely unmaintained to grow wild and look unsightly. This short video is a quick tip on how to cut back your grass after winter and help it look like the photo below.