Alongside landscaping beautiful grounds and gardens, here at Thames Valley Landscapes we also operate a grounds maintenance service that keeps your outside areas looking in pristine condition all year round.
But what exactly is ground maintenance? What do maintenance teams do? And why is it important to keep your grounds well maintained?
We’ve answered all those questions and a few more in our blog below. Read on to find out more.
What is grounds maintenance?
Grounds maintenance is the activity of keeping outside spaces looking clean, well-kept and attractive. These grounds might belong to commercial properties such as hotels, sports facilities or schools. Or the private grounds of a house.
Grounds maintenance teams regularly carry out activities like lawn mowing, pruning, weeding, planting, watering and feeding plants.
Because a lot of these tasks can involve heavy machinery, working at height or with dangerous chemicals, it’s important that this team are trained and certified in such things as health and safety.
What do grounds maintenance professionals do?
Each property is different and will have a grounds maintenance schedule drawn up to suit. But overall, ground maintenance professionals possess a wide range of skills to cover the demands of any site. Their regular activities typically include:
- General grounds keeping: involving everyday maintenance and upkeep duties such as mowing the grass, trimming hedges, leaf clearance, controlling weeds and aerating soil.
- Landscaping: helping to preserve and improve the landscape by maintaining hard landscaping elements such as patios and paths. Adding new features such as ponds or garden buildings. Or soft landscaping by planting and caring for flowers, trees and shrubs.
- Tree surgery: caring for trees by pruning dead or diseased branches, administering treatments and shaping forms for visual interest.
- Pesticides: understanding where and when to safely apply appropriate chemical treatments to kill weeds and pests.
How is landscaping different to grounds maintenance?
Whereas the aim of grounds maintenance is to continually maintain and improve the appearance of landscaped areas. The aim of landscaping is to create an aesthetically pleasing living space outdoors with a harmonious link to the indoors.
The process of landscaping is transformative. It involves a team of garden landscapers, normally working alongside a garden designer, who turn garden designs into a reality.
They do this through the practical process of clearing and defining the grounds with heavy duty equipment. Before then creating the structure of the garden with hard landscaping (patios, paths, retaining walls, fencing). Soft landscaping is finally used to add the finishing touches of garden features and plants.
Why is grounds maintenance important?
Grounds can often be overlooked in favour of internal interior design. But savvy property owners know that by keeping their grounds looking good their property (and business) is going to benefit.
1. Attract the right kind of attention
Eye catching grounds with great planting and interesting features capture the attention of potential customers. Shots of gorgeous grounds in promotional literature, on your website or social media will attract people to your location. Passing trade will feel drawn to your business with this added kerb appeal. So having well-tended, inviting grounds can make the vital difference between someone choosing to visit you vs your competition.
As well attracting the visitors you do want, well maintained grounds also act as a deterrent to those you don’t. Neglected spaces can act as an open invitation to potential trouble such as burglars or vandals. Presenting a cared for property can help to deflect this away.
2. Give a good first impression
Carefully cared for grounds not only attract people to your property but present an important good first impression of your business. So, if you’re looking to recruit staff, or create a memorable experience that keeps customers coming back, make sure your outside area exceeds expectations.
After all, in an age of social media where it’s easy to share images online, you’ll want to make sure that when posts featuring your grounds are shared, a favourable impression is given. What better free marketing is there than that?
3. Look after your visitors
Grounds maintenance also helps to ensure an accessible and safe environment for your staff and visitors. From fixing broken paving slabs, to ensuring paths are smooth, level and clear of obstacles, or encouraging the safe growth of trees, regular grounds maintenance helps to provide somewhere that can be enjoyed by all.
4. Improve motivation
Many studies show that a pleasant physical environment can boost morale and motivation. Which in turn impacts positively on wellness and performance. The view from a window is just as important as having a green space to relax and unwind in – so if you want happy guests and healthy staff, improving your natural surrounds will pay dividends back in loyalty and performance.
You could even take it one step further and introduce greenery and nature indoors. This rising trend of bringing nature in is known as the ‘biophilic concept’. Biophilia (Latin for ‘love of nature’) is a design approach that seeks to extend natures reach indoors. It does this by incorporating inspiration from nature into natural lighting, ventilation, shapes, patterns, textures and scents.
The resulting connection with greenery and nature has been shown to bring many benefits to people’s health and well-being:
- Increasing productivity in offices
- Bringing calm and restfulness to homes and caring environments like hospitals
- Improve learning in education centres
Our grounds maintenance service
If your grounds would benefit from some regular TLC please get in touch for a quote. We cover the Thames Valley and have been maintaining grounds and gardens for commercial properties for over 20 years. Our staff are fully trained alongside the IOG and are City and Guilds qualified. Our individually tailored grounds maintenance contracts are designed to suit your site and needs.
With us on your team you’ll find you have a reliable and professional partner who care about consistently delivering a quality service.
To enquire about our grounds maintenance service please call 01628 629720.
