Holidays!! With barely three weeks away from Christmas, I feel like all homeowners and landscapers should be rewarded. To thank you for reading this blog, I’ve dropped the price of my online course to just $5 until January 1, 2024. If you don’t know the background, I will share a little bit here. In my twenty-five seasons in the landscape industry, I’ve seen my share of lawn care mistakes. I’ve made them; and I’ve tried to correct them in others. Then it hit me: why not assemble the biggest mistakes in one course and make it available to a wider audience. Learn from other people’s mistakes Obv ..read more

Feeling the heat? There was a hot, dry and dusty stretch in July and August and many landscapers had difficulty finding work. Since their lawns were short and brown, they had extra time on their hands. And finding work on site shows experience. To find work you have to look closely at your landscape or garden. The work is there. I know because I have done it. When people cry there is no work, I rush in to help them. That is what good landscape managers do. Let us take a look. Work examples Any ferns that have not been clipped in spring, like this native sword fern (Polystichum munitum), can be ..read more

The basics Recently I purchased a chainsaw attachment for around $300 which fits onto my ECHO PAS engine. Since I mostly do pruning, not logging, I opted for this attachment instead of a regular dedicated chainsaw. If you take down trees and cut them into firewood then definitely get one of those. Yesterday I had to remove six dead cedars so I used this chainsaw attachment to take down the tops in sections, leaving a three foot “joystick”. The joystick gives you nice leverage when you try to take out the root ball. The new, sharp chain sliced through the dead stems nicely. And that is the poin ..read more

From Japan, with love It used to be that only my trusted Felco 2 hand snips would hang on my belt. But now my belt also supports the Japanese hori-hori knife. It’s very sturdy so you feel its weight a little bit, it has a sharp tip like most knives and one side is serrated. This comes in handy when you are dividing perennials in the fall. The knife also bailed me out yesterday when I was taking out dead cedar trees. Since I forgot to bring a shovel (don’t ask!) I was able to stick the knife in the ground and find the roots, which I then severed with my hand snips. I hate to do this with my han ..read more

Do we have a problem? The owner of this young Dawn redwood tree (Metasequoia glyptostroboides) started panicking when his prized tree showed signs of browning. Now what? People on Facebook offered lots of advice, as they often do. My own comments were about the tree well. I would enlarge it to keep lawn care machines away from the tree; and to allow the tree to collect water and nutrients. It’s good to keep grass away from your tree because it’s a tough competitor. Sometimes trees planted in lawns don’t thrive; all you get is status quo. Another obvious issue is water and proper planting. Was ..read more

Link of gold Usually, surfing online is an awful time-waster but not today. While checking my Facebook feed I came across a recent video recording of a presentation given by my mentor Dr. Linda Chalker-Scott. You might have read my earlier blog about Linda. In it, I call her my hero because she covers gardening as a scientist. This means that her findings and writings are based in science, not gardening hearsay. When I read about her experiments with mulch flammability I was extremely jealous. I would love to torch different mulches in the name of science. Linda uses science to bust persistant ..read more

Not the best What’s wrong with this picture? This obviously isn’t the best planting job; nor is it a great photograph. If you can, zoom in a little bit to see how the root ball is almost fifty-percent exposed. Roots anchor the rhododendron and seek out water and nutrients for the shrub. They can’t really do their job when they’re exposed to the elements. They just desiccate and die. I took this picture in summer when the province was in drought conditions. Clearly, the plant is in a rough shape. It’s dead and I wonder if it could have been prevented with better planting. Planting too deep is ..read more

Don’t discriminate I love seeing and knowing the entire garden or strata complex landscape. Not just the high-profile entrance and car ramp areas but every little corner, including raised box beds and back of the building areas. You must move beyond the “beauty strip” to succeed. This isn’t the first time I’ve written about it; but I remembered the idea when I substituted recently for another vacationing landscape foreman. His main helper volunteered to cover the back of the building by himself, which sounds like he reads my blogs. Not so. He’s a smoker and by working at the back of the buildi ..read more

Why care? As you visit this blog and read the headline, you’ll probably think “why should I care about an arborist store?” It’s not like I’m an arborist; I hire those people in shiny helmets so they can charge me exorbitant sums of money for tree and shrub maintenance. Hold on, let me explain. It’s important to know where your nearest arborist store is because they sell quality, sharp hand saws, snips and loppers; tools homeowners are most likely to use. Yes, the big box stores carry those tools but they’re not as good. Go for quality so you can make great cuts, every time. It happens to me ev ..read more

Home depot discovery As a landscape professional I have to protect my hearing as the seasons and years pile on. I have plugs and several Peltor earmuffs which run in the $50 range. And I also used to know several pairs of earphones so I could listen to audiobooks at work. But given the nature of my work-non-stop movement outdoors-I would thrash my earphones weekly. Then, one lucky day I found myself inside a Home Depot store and I noticed a cardboard showcase at the end of an aisle. TZumi bluetooth headset that cost less than my trusty Peltors!? What? Really? I immediately jumped on it because ..read more