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Renovate your old, outdated, and overgrown lawn.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
Trees provide countless benefits, including protection and enhancement to your property. Not only do they stop storm water runoff, conserve electricity usage and improve air quality, but also your trees can buffer strong winds that enter your property. Therefore, it is very important to keep our trees healthy.
Wintertime is a great time to prune since the trees are dormant. It is usually best to wait until the coldest part of winter has passed. This is a good way to keep them healthy and protect them from disease such as oak wilt or Dutch elm disease. Pruning during this time results in a vigorous burst of new growth in the spring and should be used if that is the desired effect. It also allows the tree to seal the wound immediately at the start of the growing season. This decreases the amount of sap flow and provides a longer healing period. Some species such as, maple, walnuts and birches may “bleed” when the sap begins to flow. This is not harmful and will cease when the tree leafs out.
Do not shake limbs to try and remove snow or ice – When you find your trees are bending or sagging due to ice and snow accumulation, your first instinct is probably to shake the branches. This may cause breakage or damage. Plants are flexible, so knocking off the weight of accumulation may cause them to “snap” back, potentially damaging the circulatory system. Have an arborist examine damaged branches for signs of weakness.
Safely remove broken limbs – If a limb breaks off from the weight of ice or snow and remains in the tree canopy, have it removed and the stub properly cut as soon as the weather allows. Hanging branches can be a danger to people and property. In addition, the tree will heal better when properly pruned. For undamaged limbs bending under the weight of ice or snow, don’t prune as a means of correcting the situation; the limbs should return naturally as the weather conditions change.
Prevent snow and ice damage to trees – Make sure your trees are pruned properly. Particularly important is the removal of hazardous, dead or weak branches. Trees that tend to suffer the worst damage as a result of snow and ice are upright Evergreens, like Arborvitae and Juniper, and Clump Trees, like Birch. And, when it comes to ice, age doesn’t make a tree stronger; younger trees actually tend to survive better in ice storms.
Now is the perfect time to start planting springtime bulbs. Flowers are few, and days are getting chilly but until the temperature drops and stays below 32 degrees you can start planting springtime bulbs. Spring blooming bulbs require a chilling period. They’re dormant when you get them and break dormancy only after the chilling period. Winter conveniently supplies this necessary cold period. That’s why you put the bulbs in the ground now to have beautiful flowers by spring. Although you won’t see them bloom for months, selecting species, cultivar, color and style is a great wintertime entertainment.
The best springtime bulbs we suggest to plant are: tulips, iris, crocuses, and daffodils. Tulips are very popular due to the infinite amount of colors they come in. These are a good choice for beds and borders. You can enjoy the beauty of tulips from early spring to late summer. Iris flowers show elegance and grace and are easily grown. There are over 300 species of irises, most familiar being tall (at least 28 inches). Crocuses are the earliest springtime bulbs to bloom, blooming as early as late winter. Snow crocuses (the first to bloom) to giant Dutch crocuses are all just two inches tall. These blooms offer a variety in colors that stand out against the bleak late-winter landscape. If you are not planting this perennial bulb you are missing out on an early season of delight. Daffodils are another flower that comes up very early in the springtime. They’re a great solutions for gardens where deer, rabbits, and squirrels tend to chew on your plants because although they look pretty they taste terrible!
So what are you waiting for? Let’s plant some of these bulbs now for beautiful blooms come spring!
Peter A Navarra Landscape understands that it’s about that time for firewood. Some people like to sit by a warm fire, relaxing while reading a good book or watching TV with the family, while other people use a use it to keep their oil bills lower by heating their homes or businesses. In either case, we know how important it is to have a clean, split, and seasoned product.
We offer a variety of seasoned hardwood, which is wood that has ease. The seasoning process is what allows the wood to burn clean and efficiently in your wood stove or fireplace. In order to season the wood it must go through a process that takes about 8-12 months. Depending on the sunlight conditions, air circulation around the pile and rotation of the pile during the seasoning process it can be more or less time. The moisture content at the end of seasoning is around 20%, it may vary depending on the source.
Once the seasoned wood has been cut and split for 8-12 months, we can deliver it to you. Seasoned wood will appear to be gray in color in some cases which is evidence of a correct seasoning process. Seasoned is the most common type of wood on the market and is available all winter long, it is stored outside and may have some snow or surface moisture on it, depending on the weather. This will quickly dry off once under cover or brought into your home. Once it dries, it does not affect the quality of the wood.
Our firewood is available for delivery six days a week anytime during the year. Our courteous and responsible crews are able to provide your home or business with the quantity of wood that you desire, with only a days notice. Our crews can also take all the hard work out of your firewood process. We can stack your wood wherever you would like, from the backyard to inside the house, tell us the spot and we can accommodate it. We will be happy to stack wood of any increments, however, additional notice is needed and additional costs will apply based on the amount and stacking.
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.
