Please read my new blog post about courtesy clean-up blow in landscape maintenance.
​http://properlandscaping.com/lawn-care/courtesy-blow-landscaping/

​If you work in landscaping, always clean-up your site before finishing. That's why it's called a courtesy blow. Your clients shouldn't even know you were there. Leaving a mess behind is amateurish.

​If you are a home owner, insist that your landscapers clean-up your property with a courtesy clean-up blow. It should be a given. 

Sometimes plants get out of hand and pruning for separation is required. This week I finally got a chance to separate a rhododendron and sourwood tree (Oxydendron arboreum)
The last I was at this site, the rhododendron was close to blooming so it wasn't a good time for pruning. Now, in August, I finally pruned a bit off both plants.

​This often happens with shrubs which quickly shoot out and start growing into each other. So unless you have plants of the same species growing into a hedge, definitely consider pruning for separation.

​See below for before an

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After training lots of new landscapers in the field, I realized that I was answering the same plant identification questions over and over. Then it hit me. Why not compile a simple picture file of the most common strata plants we see on our work sites. It would give our new workers a starting point without overwhelming them.
​Thanks to Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing system, I've done it. You can read more about it here.
Strata owners and property managers might also be interested in knowing the basic plant species that are found on their sites.

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