Are you thinking about hiring a commercial landscape maintenance company? Asking the right questions during your initial commercial landscaping consultation can help ensure that you’re making a wise choice and that you fully understand what you’re getting for your investment.
But if you’ve never hired a commercial landscaper before, you may have no clue what you should be asking about.
Jump to Section
- What Does a Typical Maintenance Contract Cover?
- What Services Would Be Considered 'Extras '?
- How Frequent Will Service Visits Be?
- How Do You Schedule Your Service Visits?
- Who Will Be My Point of Contact?
- How Soon Should You Expect to Hear From Us After Reaching Out?
- How Do You Handle Plant Health Care & Advanced Services?
- Will You Do Work Without Consulting Us?
- Choosing Commercial Landscape Maintenance in Greater Chicago
The last thing we want to see is property managers or other decision-makers feeling like they didn’t understand what they were signing up for.
In this article, we’ll cover the questions that we recommend asking before signing a commercial landscaping contract.
We’ll discuss eight common questions that will help you gather valuable information about what to expect, and we’ll share with you how we’d answer them if you were asking us.
The following questions can help you form a clear picture of what to expect from a commercial landscaping agreement.
1. What Does a Typical Maintenance Contract Cover?
Typically, mowing, edging, fertilization, and pruning are covered in a standard commercial landscaping contract.
These are the key services required to maintain your commercial property in optimal condition. However, there may be other services that can benefit you.
2. What Services Would Be Considered 'Extras?'
Mulching, irrigation, and flower installations (“enhancements”) are normally outside of the scope of service. But these are also valuable services that you want to consider incorporating into your plan.
Beyond enhancements, repairs that fall outside the scope of your maintenance contract, additional service visits and other unforeseen factors might become 'extra' services, even if they seem similar to your regular landscape maintenance.
3. How Frequent Will Service Visits Be?
This usually depends on your specific contract, but it’s often weekly during the active growing season (April through November). Some contracts are bi-weekly.
A lot of it depends on what you’re having done. Most of the time, mowing is done every week, but a service like pruning might be done biweekly.
In addition to frequency, you should also discuss areas that should be covered. These can be pointed out during an initial landscaping walkthrough. This should then be clearly defined in the contract.
4. How Do You Schedule Your Service Visits?
Weekly visits are typically scheduled along a designated route. The specifics of this can depend on what type of property you have.
For instance, HOAs are typically scheduled on Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday, so that the lawn looks nice for the weekend.
However, a corporate or industrial site is often scheduled for Monday or Tuesday, as the priority is to present a good appearance for visitors during business hours during the week.
5. Who Will Be My Point of Contact?
You will have an account manager who will serve as your primary point of contact. This person should be highly accessible and skilled at communication.
Your account manager is your primary point of contact for all needs that fall within your regular contract, as well as for any additional requests or questions.
6. How Soon Should You Expect to Hear From Us After Reaching Out?
It can be frustrating when you need to reach your commercial landscaping company about a question or maybe even a problem, and you aren’t getting a response.
Get ahead of this by asking about what you can anticipate in terms of a response time. A highly communicative and effective account manager should respond within 24 hours.
7. How Do You Handle Plant Health Care & Advanced Services?
Plant health is a crucial aspect of landscaping, yet it’s often overlooked. At KD Landscape, periodic landscape inspections may reveal problems, like deficiencies in plant health. For instance, premature leaf drop might be spotted.
If that’s the case, then plant health services might be recommended. Since many potential tree problems do mimic one another, it often takes an expert eye to determine exactly what’s going on.
This is what makes your landscape inspections so valuable.
8. Will You Do Work Without Consulting Us?
In general, a commercial landscaping company that takes a proactive approach will help ensure that you maximize your investment in their services. This is a bit of a loaded question as many landscapers will just say, “Yes.” However, you can always request specific examples to support that claim.
A proactive commercial landscaper should identify potential issues during their landscaping walkthroughs and consistently offer recommendations on how to enhance the property.
It’s not beneficial to work with a company that just maintains the status quo. You want your commercial property to be ever-improving.
And you want to work with a landscaper who is also keeping a watchful eye for potential problems and preventing them from happening.
Choosing Commercial Landscape Maintenance in Greater Chicago
These common landscaping questions should give you a good starting point for gaining a better understanding of your commercial landscaping contract. But you should never hesitate to ask as many questions as you need to.
It can be a red flag if a company isn’t willing to take time to answer your questions. Often, how things go during the initial commercial landscaping consultation is a preview of what it will be like working with that company.
In other words, if a company isn’t very communicative or transparent when they’re trying to gain your business, you really can’t anticipate they’re suddenly going to become that way once they have it!
We understand that it can be challenging to find the right partner who truly empathizes with the unique challenges of your Greater Chicago commercial property. But the work must get done, and KD Landscape wants to help you make the most informed and best decision for you.
For that reason, we’re always here to help answer questions. We believe that communication is at the heart of the best relationships with our property managers.
Want to learn more about KD Landscape’s commercial landscape maintenance in Chicagoland? Get started today with an on-site consultation. We’ll review your options together so you can make a great choice.
