Above is a picture of newly front foundation plantings.  Recently we redesigned the front foundation plantings from overgrown and unwanted shrubbery to a combination of flowering evergreens and perennials. This plant selection will give color throughout spring, summer and fall.

Your yard is often the first thing people notice about your home, so it’s important to leave a good first impression. If your lawn is overgrown, bare, or simply boring, it’s time to renovate. Landscaping company Peter Navarra Landscaping Co Inc., based in Harrison, NY, but serving Westchester, NY, and Fairfield County, CT, offers landscape design services, installing walkways, backyard ponds, and new plants, as well as providing routine lawn maintenance services. With over 47 years in business, they understand just what you need to make your property beautiful.

The first step in any home improvement project is determining what you’d like your outdoor space to look like. Take a walk around your yard and figure out what you’d like to see changed. Look out for dying plants, empty spaces, and crowded flower beds. Determine how you’d like your yard to be used—do you want a patio for relaxing or an area for grilling? Peter Navarra Landscaping Co Inc. provides a number of landscape design services to make over your yard. They offer drainage designs, step and patio designs, waterfalls, outdoor fireplaces, privacy screenings, and, of course, plants and bed designs.

Once you’ve determined what you’d like to be changed, it’s time to plan it out. First, measure the available space and draw it to scale. Then, you can place the items you’d like into your design, arranging them as you see fit. Select the materials and plants that fit your aesthetic and your budget, keeping in mind your local climate. Though you can plan your yard yourself, hiring a professional landscaping company can make the process less stressful and time-consuming and can save you money in the long run. The landscapers at Peter Navarra Landscaping Co Inc. have the experience to transform your lawn into a functional, visually appealing space, and will work with you to create the backyard you’ve always wanted.

Renovate your old, outdated, and overgrown lawn. Peter Navarra Landscaping Co Inc. will help you every step of the way, from design conception to the product installation. For more information on this landscaping company’s services, call (914) 835-5733

Fall Overseeding

Late summer or early autumn is a great time for fall overseeding to heal cool-season lawns that have been damaged by the summer.  Summer damage includes diseases, drought,  lawn damaging insects or foot traffic.  That’s because cool-season grasses as their name implies, grow best when air temperatures are between 60 and 75 degrees Fahrenheit.

 

How to do fall overseeding

Fall overseeding consists of selecting the best grass seed to use for fall overseeding and then applying it to the lawn appropriately.  In order to do it correctly you must use the proper amount, with either a rotary or drop spreader.  This also requires some knowledge of the types of turfgrass so the new grass matches (as much as possible) the appearance of the lawn where it is being seeded.  It also requires some mathematical calculations so that you apply the correct amount of seed to the lawn.

 

Fall aeration and overseeding

Since germination depends upon seed-to-soil contact, fall overseeding is often combined with lawn aeration which pulls cores of soil from the lawn so that water, air and nutrients have easier access to turfgrass roots.  The resulting holes in the soil also give the new turfgrass seedlings favorable conditions to grow and mature assuming the receive frequent light, watering, and are fertilized properly.

 

Advantages of overseeding

There are many advantages of overseeding.  Overseeding will fill in areas of turf damaged by summer stress, diseases or lawn damaging insects.  Overseeding also thickens and increases the density of thin lawns.   The lawn’s ability to fight lawn damaging insects and diseases will be increased by a lot.  Overall, the appearance of the lawn will be improved majorly.

 

Winter injury on broad-leaved plants may be one of the biggest stories of Spring 2015 but don’t give up and remove the damaged plant just yet.  Leaves injured by winter desiccation and cold may be an immediate cosmetic problem but look beyond this to the stems instead. If the stems are green on the surface or bright green under the bark when you nick the bark with your finger, then the stem tissue has not been killed and buds should produce new foliage as old foliage is shed.  Checking the buds themselves to see if they are healthy and green is another way to determine whether a branch or twig has suffered winter injury.

On broad-leaved evergreen plants like hollies, euonymus and skip laurel, the state of winter-injured foliage often does not matter relative to plant viability. What does matter is whether or not stems are still alive to produce new growth. On rhododendrons, the case often seems to be different in  that curled leaves that don’t return to a natural shape after the weather warms up (and then start to turn brown/reddish brown), are often indicative of injured stem tissue as well. Be sure to check for bright green tissue under the bark before pruning to be sure you actually need to remove the branch but if death of stem tissue is determined, prune down to the healthiest tissue that you find, just above a bud.  The same method of pruning away winter-injured stems and twigs may be used on most other broad-leaved woody plants.