Landscape Issues

The District provides a 52 visits per year landscape maintenance program. The City’s program calls for only 29 visits per year. These visits include litter pickup, leaf removal, tree and seasonal plant material trimming, mulching, watering, color plant additions, and much more. These photos were taken on the same day, January 4th, with no special preparation done on the District's property. The City photos are from Buttercup Blvd. and the District photos are from Sunchase Blvd.  (Photos of Buttercup Blvd. are not intended to be critical of the Buttercup Creek neighborhood. They are only for the purpose of illustrating the differences between the District's and the City's level of landscape maintenance.)
Buttercup Blvd
With 52 visits per year, leaves do not gather on common areas or roads.
Sunchase Blvd

 

 

District Program
City Program
Landscaping guidelines in the District call for mulch to be present and maintained at all times (upper left and below).  This appears to be substantially different than the City’s landscape program (upper right).
District Program

 

 

Buttercup Blvd
The City of Cedar Park provides litter removal as part of its landscape maintenance program.  However, with 52 visits per year, the District's program provides more litter removal and less trash gathers on District roads. This is not to suggest that the City does not pick up trash.  We believe that a 52 week program where a service company is paid and measured on timely clean up is simply a more productive approach than what the city can offer.
Sunchase Blvd

 

Maintaining a Healthy and Attractive Landscape
by Richard Fadal, owner of TexaScapes and KEYE TV's Green Gardener

Keeping a landscape healthy, environmentally sound, and looking good on a weekly basis - 52 weeks per year - requires 52 full service visits by a well trained grounds keeping crew. The City is offering 29 visits per year. The difference is not simply the winter overseeding; it is the consistency of taking care of all necessary landscape maintenance details each and every week. Once that consistency is lost by missing 23 visits per year, the landscape health and appearance start to deteriorate, whether there is overseeded turf grass or not. I do believe overseeded turf grass is a huge part of a good organic program, because the ryegrass keeps all weeds out for the 8 months (October through May) of its growth cycle, produces oxygen for lots of families, and only uses a little more irrigation water than one should be putting out on a healthy winter landscape.

In order to keep turf grass healthy and not declining, no more than 1/3 of the leaf blade should be cut during each mowing; thus the 7 day minimum mowing cycle. If there is no overseeding, the warm season grasses around here green up to a cutting height by March and stay green and growing at least until the end of November. That is 10 months of weekly mowing or a minimum of 42 mowing and trimming events. The months of December through February have tons of leaf and twig drop to deal with, and without overseeding still require weekly visits to keep accumulations from getting out of hand.  Add in all the landscape pruning, weeding, fire ant treatments, planting detailing, etc; and even the best grounds keeping crew in the world will not get things done right in only 29 visits per year.

A 29 visit per year landscape maintenance program will result in a quick deterioration of the landscape investments and an overall poor appearance throughout the year.