First impressions always matter.
In today’s competitive market, whether you manage a corporate office park, retail center, industrial facility, hospital, school grounds, or other commercial property, the condition of your landscape can significantly impact your business's perception and reputation.
A well-maintained outdoor space elevates the visual appeal of your site and fosters a welcoming environment for clients, tenants, visitors, employees, and guests.
While commercial landscaping can improve aesthetics, property value, safety, and client confidence, it can also positively impact the environment. The key is to limit the environmental risks of landscape applications during these tasks.
Read on to learn more about:
- Environmental Impact of Lawns & Landscapes
- Avoiding Environmental Risks of Landscape Applications on Commercial Properties
Let’s discuss how commercial landscape maintenance in Greater Chicago can boost sustainability and how choosing the right company can help enhance these efforts and avoid unnecessary landscaping contamination.
Environmental Impact of Lawns & Landscapes
The landscapes commercial property owners create and care for in Greater Chicago can lead to healthier local communities, making them important to neighborhood environments.
There are, in fact, many surprising benefits of sustainable, well-maintained landscapes. Let’s get into some of the main ones so you can see what proper commercial lawn care is important.
Commercial Landscapes Benefit Health and Well-Being
Landscape plants have many health benefits that can improve heart health, decrease depression, and reduce stress.
For instance, hospital patients who have a view of nature from their windows have been found to heal faster than those without. Natural light can reduce post-operative patients' use of pain medication, as well as their recovery time.
Children who grow up surrounded by green spaces have a 55 percent lower risk of mental health problems later in life. This evidence shows that natural environments around schools or learning facilities play a larger role in mental health outcomes than previously thought.
With the ongoing increase in health issues and healthcare expenses, the significance of well-kept properties featuring suitable commercial landscaping for health may grow even more crucial in the future.
Commercial Landscapes Can Improve Work and School Performance
Natural settings have a stress-reducing and anxiety-calming effect on people, helping them perform better at the office or school. This means proper commercial lawn care is crucial to keep these settings healthy.
For example, workers with a view of trees tend to have better job satisfaction and lower stress than people who don’t have that view. People also experience improved outcomes during memory tasks after looking at nature or walking through an outdoor environment.
Students, meanwhile, achieved better exam results at schools with trees.
Commercial Landscapes Reduce Pollution
Plants and turf absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis, which releases oxygen back into the air after the carbon dioxide has been removed.
Landscape features like commercial turf, rain gardens, and permeable pavers can reduce stormwater runoff and erosion by allowing precipitation to soak into the earth.
This prevents pollutants from entering nearby streams, rivers, and oceans, reducing the environmental risks of landscape applications.
Commercial Landscapes Keep Temperatures in Check
A shade tree can certainly provide relief on a hot Chicago day, but plants also help keep things cool. Proper vegetation that adds to a site's beauty, like native plants vs. rampant weeds, makes targeted commercial weed control important.
Lawns, for example, are 4 degrees Celsius cooler than concrete. Healthy lawns also lower the air temperatures around them due to transpiration.
This can make an area much more comfortable for tenants, shoppers, and visitors, encouraging more interaction.
Avoiding Environmental Risks of Landscape Applications on Commercial Properties
Now that you know what the right kind of commercial landscape maintenance in Greater Chicago can do for your business, let’s discuss how to get this done right.
After all, neglecting your commercial landscaping maintenance can cause employees, guests, and visitors to feel that your environment isn’t healthy or safe. It can also decrease your business's overall appearance and reputation, not to mention increase costs due to needed repairs and landscape renovations. No one wants that.
Commercial lawn care professionals use various products in their daily operations. Pesticides and herbicides help control insects and weeds, and chemicals and dyes may be used to maintain water features.
These applications can be very beneficial for your guests on your commercial property. Proper pest prevention and well-maintained lawns help protect people from environmental threats, such as ticks, mosquitoes, and fleas.
If these products aren’t mixed correctly or mishandled during application, they cannot only waste products but also miss the intended target and require more applications to properly control the situation.
In addition, landscape professionals must store, transport, and mix these products properly to limit spills.
Lawn care professionals who receive proper training, education, and licensing ensure this work is done right and has minimal environmental impact.
Here are some areas where environmental risks of landscape applications can exist.
Landscape Excavation
When a landscape professional excavates into the soil to install plants or excavate for irrigation systems or hardscapes, this has the potential to create pollution.
How? They could hit subsurface utilities, such as water, gas, sewer, or septic systems, which can cause hazardous releases.
Excavation often requires the use of sedimentary barriers to avoid erosion of piled soil and debris. Ensuring these measures are in place before excavation begins is key to containing the mess.
Commercial Lawn Care: Runoff, Spills, and Drifts
Soils contain silts and sediments that can be carried off soil surfaces to other areas.
Improper erosion control can lead to this runoff, impairing the proper function of stormwater drainage systems or catching basins and damaging streams, rivers, and aquatic systems.
Overapplication or improper applications of any commercial lawn care product on top of areas without proper stormwater management or erosion tactics can increase contamination of local bodies of water.
Spilling these products in areas that can’t absorb them can also be problematic. Removing vegetation and not disposing of it properly can do the same.
Furthermore, it is important to know if the weather conditions are ideal for applying pesticides or fertilizers. Pesticide drift can occur in windy conditions and limit the proper target of the products.
Storage and Transportation
Storage of all commercial lawn care products is key to limiting negative environmental exposure.
Proper storage ensures that the products are not exposed to rainwater and do not leak unnecessarily into nearby waterways.
Proper transportation of these products is also important since an accident could cause leaks or spills.
Finally, correct disposal procedures are key to ensuring that materials are rinsed from containers or spray equipment to limit environmental contamination.
Sustainable Landscape Architecture
Poorly constructed commercial landscapes can cause increased erosion, stormwater runoff, and other environmental issues.
So, the key is to start with a proper landscape design and installation plan at the beginning.
/landscaspe%20designer%20office%20design%20software%20computers.jpg?width=1620&height=1080&name=landscaspe%20designer%20office%20design%20software%20computers.jpg)
Sustainable environmental planning starts with examining LEED certification guidelines, which will guide the design, installation, and maintenance of commercial landscapes in Greater Chicago.
Some ideas that support these efforts include:
- Choosing native plants: When choosing plants for a commercial landscape, consider plants native to the area. They thrive in the existing soil, temperatures, and weather conditions and typically need less water and care. Native plants are also more resistant to diseases and pests in the area.
- Green roofs: Incorporating green roofs can help reduce the overall urban heat island effect and insulate commercial buildings to make them more energy efficient.
- Heat island reduction: Reducing city temperatures can be done with smart landscaping. While turf can do this, so can smarter hardscaping. For instance, choosing light-colored pavers for walkways can help reduce temperatures by reflecting heat and sun rays rather than absorbing them.
- Stormwater solutions: Planning for proper stormwater retention and drainage can help prevent flooding, overflowing sewage systems, and erosion. Well-designed detention ponds and permeable paver installations can be strategies used here.
How KD Landscape Keeps The Environment in Mind On Your Property
To ensure commercial landscape maintenance in Greater Chicago remains healthy over time, reducing the need for emergency intervention, KD Landscape incorporates sustainable practices into every part of its design, installation, and management processes.
This includes promoting biodiversity with native plants and ensuring irrigation systems are efficient to prevent water waste.
Creating a long-term, positive relationship with the local environment takes monitoring and adjustments. To do this, KD Landscape reviews the effectiveness of each of its client’s commercial landscape maintenance plans and makes necessary adjustments to adapt to weather challenges or unexpected issues.
To do this properly, they set up monthly or quarterly review meetings with the client to assess progress and address new questions. Then, based on plant health and client feedback, they adjust the maintenance strategies as needed.
As you can see, commercial landscaping offers vast benefits for avoiding the environmental risks associated with landscape applications. Still, doing this right requires a proactive plan, attention to detail, and increasing professionalism, property value, and profits.
This can be challenging to do on your own. Calling a commercial grounds management professional can help take these tasks off your plate, ensuring your landscape looks well cared for, plants are healthy, the property is safe, and you save time and money.
Let KD Landscape help. We can save you headaches and stress while keeping your commercial landscaping looking top-notch. We offer a comprehensive list of services to ensure nothing is overlooked, and we can even provide suggestions on how to use your budget to improve your property.
Want more about our commercial maintenance services for your Greater Chicago site? Get started today with an on-site consultation. We’ll review your options together so you can make a great choice.
