Adding a Flower and Shrub Maintenance Service

For many lawn care professionals, winter provides downtime to dream about the future of the operation. Where have you always wanted to grow geographically? What services are you interested in adding? Who do you hope your target market will be in one year, five years, ten years?

One service you may consider adding this season is flower and shrub maintenance. If you’ve limited your operation to lawn care until now, it could be time to expand. Flower and shrub maintenance is a good way to gain trust from your customers with landscaping projects, and it begins with outlining a program.

One option is to offer monthly treatment of a non-selective herbicide on the landscape. If you’re already visiting a customer’s home to mow or treat their lawn, why not treat their flowers and shrubs while you’re at it? This can be a good way to build a relationship and trust with your customer.

Alternatively, you could stretch the time between visits by using a granular herbicide called Snapshot. Apply it under the mulch for best results, and keep an eye out for spurge because it’s not well controlled by Snapshot. With this approach, you can wait to make a return visit for six to nine weeks after the initial application.

Longer-term treatment is also an option. A granular pre-emergent herbicide like BroadStar or a liquid residual herbicide like SureGuard can minimize visits to twice a year. By keeping your labor costs down, a long-term treatment program could be the best way to venture into flower and shrub maintenance. 

As with any maintenance program, there are a multitude of factors that influence when, where, and how you treat flowers and shrubs. These factors may differ from year to year and require flexible staffing and pricing for your business. But don’t underestimate the value that a more full-service lawn care company can have for your customers.