FAQs

The best way to find a reputable landscaper or landscaping company near you is by word of mouth. Ask your friends, neighbors, and colleagues if they’ve worked with a company they’d recommend. Another good source is reading online reviews, like the 5-Star reviews that Total Maintenance Pro has and checking out company websites to see what kind of projects they’ve worked on. Once you’ve narrowed it down, you can set up a consultation with each company. That way, you can learn more about their values and services, and choose the one that aligns with your project’s needs.

Landscaping takes part in cycles throughout the year. Generally, spring is the best time for prepping and planting flower beds and beginning hardscaping projects. The summer construction season is when the majority of large landscaping and hardscaping projects are done. Fall is then a great time for planting trees and bushes since temperatures are lower. Hardscaping also continues through the fall until the ground freezes or it begins to snow.

To ensure your project gets done in the desired time frame, start contacting us during the winter months. It’s much better to get on our schedule before spring when their season starts than calling in late summer when out crews may be booked out to the end of the season.

Modern landscaping refers to the designing, planning, and construction of gardens and other features that both create useable space for outdoor activities and enhance the appearance around a home or business. Landscaping includes hardscaping and softscaping, although many people refer to them softscaping and landscaping interchangeably. Hardscaping would be the aspect that includes non-organic materials such as stone and woodwork, retaining walls, decks, firepits, and more. Softscaping would then refer to planting designs, creating burms and grading, and mulching. Total Maintenance Pro offers all these services.

Irrigation systems are not necessary for maintaining the health of your lawn or plants but can be helpful. Irrigation does much of the hard work that watering entails so that you don’t have to, and it hits the parts of your lawn you might miss. A hose and sprinkler can be a money-saving alternative but require you to set timers and manually move the sprinkler around your yard. With either option, though, it’s easy to waste water. Ultimately, you have to decide if an irrigation system is right for you and Total Maintenance Pro can help design and install it for you so that proper drainage will be considered too.

Aeration should take place during high growth periods. This is typically during the cooler times of the year when there’s plenty of rain, mainly the fall. Aeration puts stress on the turf, which could be detrimental when the turf is highly stressed already due to high heat and periods of drought. We recommend fall aeration with overseeding to loosen the soil and develop new growth at the same time. Aeration is great for any lawn, but especially if it gets a lot of foot traffic, is part of new construction with compact soil, or is part of thatch management/prevention program.

Annuals grow for one season, and then die when the weather gets cold. Perennials grow for multiple seasons and regrow every spring after being in dormancy during the winter. Examples of popular annuals in New Jersey are pansies, snapdragons, petunias, geraniums, salvia, California poppy, violas, and many more. Some perennial examples are daffodils, phlox, peonies, purple coneflower, daylilies, black-eyed susan, Virginia bluebells, coral bells, and more.

• Keep your garden clean. Pick up plant debris, remove dying stems or branches, weed the area regularly, and toss the debris in the garbage.

• Fertilize just enough to keep your plants happy – too much fertilizer promotes weak growth which is susceptible to disease.

• Wait to plant until the soil is warmed up. Planting to early will put extra stress on your plants and make them more susceptible to disease in the soil.

• Use mulch to keep weeds at bay and harmful fungi in the soil away.

• Inspect and remove infected stems and leaves. As soon as you notice signs of disease, carefully remove the leaf off the stems and throw it away as soon as possible. By removing disease early on, you can help your plants to continue to grow healthily.

This is a tough one. The conditions that are good for plant growth are naturally good for weed growth. But there are steps you can take to prevent weed growth early on and remove weeds if they do appear. First of all, use a landscaping fabric use it only when rocks have been laid out. in your flower beds and garden to cover the soil where you don’t want weeds to grow. Don’t use landscaping fabric when installing mulch because it will decompose and weeds will grow on top of the landscaping fabric. It would also be effective for one season and we want to prevent unnecessary expenditures. Then use a weed preventer, to further discourage weed growth. If weeds do appear, pull the entire weed, including the root, early on to prevent it from coming back. For cracks in concrete and pavers, use a commercial herbicide to kill weeds that appear. For a more organic method, try using vinegar in a spray bottle. Be warned, herbicides, including vinegar, will kill all plants they touch, not only weeds.

The basics of watering are simple. Water immediately after planting, let the water soak into the soil, and then water again. During the first week, it’s best to continue frequent watering — either daily or every other day. Following the first week, use moisture meter to properly measure and determine whether watering is needed or not. They are readily available and very inexpensive.  Call us to find out where you can purchase it.

There are many benefits, including:

• Helping the soil retain moisture

• Contributing to soil health as the breakdown of the mulch happens over time

• Blocking the sunlight to pesky weeds, helping to keep them at bay

• Repelling insects, depending on the type of mulch used

• Controlling soil erosion

We recommend mulching leaves, as they will add nutrients to your soil and make for a healthier lawn. Raking up the leaves will not harm your lawn, but you’ll also be missing out on the benefits leaves provide. One note of caution do not ignore blankets of fall leaves on your lawn, either raking or mulching is necessary. If you don’t, the leaves can actually do more harm than good since they’ll block sunlight and air from getting to the grass. This problem can be compounded when it rains, eventually leading to turf diseases or dead grass.

It depends on your situation. Drip irrigation is great for watering small areas, or individual plants alongside your home at a slower pace, but a sprinkler system can cover more ground, quickly, making it ideal for watering entire lawns. It can also be programmed to water during specific time periods, so you can set it and forget it. More advantages of drip irrigation include less water lost due to evaporation or runoff, and that it won’t wash away mulch as a heavier watering can. The drip irrigation system is also recommended because the moisture gets directly applied to the root system. The other reason is that if the water sits on the foliage for too long, it tends to create optimum conditions for fungal diseases on some plants like hydrangeas and roses . It is important to properly design the irrigation drip system since all plants have different water requirements. For instance “Big Leave Hydrangeas” might need watering twice a day during the summer months, while well established “Boxwood Shrubs need watering every other day. Consider which type of watering you’d be using it for, and weigh the pros and cons.

Absolutely! Every living plant does its job to filter carbon dioxide out of the environment — one tree alone can remove 26 pounds of CO2 annually, equaling about 11,000 miles of vehicle emissions. Plants also help keep debris and pollution out of our water supply. On top of that, trees that cast shade on your home will keep it cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter, giving your air conditioner and heating units a break. If you’re thinking about planting additional trees, shrubs, or flowers, they will all benefit our environment in their own unique way, so go for it!