Quarterly Maintenance

Starting to service some om my quarterly maintenance accounts. This is a service I offer for clients who do their own lawn maintenance but like for someone to come in and do seasonal pruning (like the Crape Myrtle and Camellia Sasanqua pictured below), fertilization and other tasks warranted depending on the time of year. Each program is tailored for the specific landscape needs of the client. And..although I seem to get a lot of calls for it..I do not mow grass or do regular lawn maintenance..ever. No slight intended for those who do-just not my thing..don't have the time and there is no shortage of folks out there who do nothing but.

Dunwoody Station-Making Progress

A lot of work done in the last two days..I'm tired! Should finish with this job tommorow. Have dug trenches for and laid 200' of pipe, removed about 100' of old pipe , moved 3 yards of gravel via wheelbarrow and...have everything covered up and ready for final grade and clean up. The hardest part today was getting the older AC units raised and leveled without harming all the pipe/connections attached to them. This was necessary in order to raise the grade a bit along that side of the house. The river rock path was installed over the part of the French Drain that leads to the back gate.

Dunwoody Station

This project is another drainage solution job. Client is getting water in the basement and the first course of action is to get as much of the water away from the foundation as possible. I will be raising the grade and a couple of AC units along the side of the house-and running two drain lines from the front corner to the back of the back yard. One is all solid and will drain the two downspouts on that side-the other is a perforated line for 50' encased in gravel as a French Drain then carried the final 50' as a solid line. I am running the two 4" lines in the same trench-that's is why it is 18-20" wide. As you can see from that back of the van-I have a lot of pipe to install!

Highland Pointe-Marietta-Crape Myrtle Pruning

Trimmed and thinned some very mature Crape Myrtles for some nice folks out in Marietta today. As I mentioned in an earlier post about Crape Myrtles, when they get over about 12' or so you can pretty much quit topping them (they will get very top heavy and "moppy" looking) and just keep them shaped up and thinned for good air circulation. These were almost touching the house and starting to shade out the Bermuda lawn-so I took care of those two issues as well.

Brookdale Park-

Finished this job yesterday and this morning before the rains came. Had to replant some Daffodils and Apidistra that were moved before installing the French Drain and I extended the drain line to empty out alongside the driveway in a swale the was then filled with egg gravel. The gravel serves two purposes-it is a natural drainage area that was starting to erode, and the erosion was worsened by folks getting a tire off the driveway when backing down-the gravel there should eliminate both problems. The final project was the installation of a rain barrel at one of the front downspouts.

French Drain and Rain Barrels...

I'm installing a French Drain at this house as more of a preventative measure. There are no problems with water getting into the house, but the grade along the side doesn't really allow for water to drain away from the structure. There is no basement along this side, the house is built on a slab-the concern is that saturated ground under and next to the slab could cause problems down the road. This client uses rain barrels to collect water for a very nicely landscaped back yard-and up till now she really didn't have a way to deal with the overflow from the barrels. Part of this project is to go ahead and route the overflow from the rain barrels into the drain line I am installing-and move a rain barrel to the front of the house where it can also overflow into the same line.