Many people underestimate the amount of time, energy, and money that goes into maintaining their lawn. Over time, these aspects really add up and can leave you feeling overwhelmed! If you’re still maintaining your own lawn, there are a few things you need to know about hiring a professional lawn care service.
There are many great reasons to hire a professional lawn care service, from financial benefits to environmental ones. Hiring professional lawn care can increase the value of your home and will always make a great first impression. Healthy lawns can also help filter water and prevent wastage thereof.
In this article, we look at the many benefits of having a lawn, from ones that directly benefit you to those that help the environment. However, your lawn can only do these things when it’s thriving and correctly cared for. When it comes to lawn care, sometimes a professional really does know best!
Should You Hire Professional Lawn Care or DIY?
When it comes down to your home’s lawn and its maintenance, there are many important factors you need to consider when you’re deciding whether you’ll maintain your lawn on your own or hire a professional lawn care service. At the end of the day, you need to make the best decision for yourself, the free time you have available, and, of course, your lawn.
Recent statistics have shown that the average American will spend, on average, seventy hours a year tending to your lawn. While this may not seem like such a monumental amount of time to spend tending to the grass on your property, the actual amount of time homeowners spend on their lawn is likely a lot more than simply seventy hours – and there’s a very good reason for it!
The statistic discussed above also takes into account those Americans who do not have any lawn to tend to, such as those living in apartment complexes or those who have removed the grass from their property. Due to this, the actual amount of time the typical homeowners dedicate to maintaining their lawn is likely a lot higher when you don’t factor those without lawns into the statistic.
In a news poll carried out by CBS ten years ago in 2011, the poll revealed that 1 in every 5 Americans ranked mowing and maintaining their lawn as their least favorite chore. If you’re reading this, there’s a chance that you are one of those individuals who doesn’t enjoy mowing their lawn – especially when you have other tasks that require your attention!
In this day and age, there often aren’t enough hours in the day to get through all our work, tasks, and errands. Between work and family commitments alone, you may be hard-pressed to find time to tend to your lawn. Especially when mowing your lawn is only one part of the necessary lawn care your garden requires.
From simpler tasks such as adjusting the mowing height of your lawnmower throughout the seasons to aerating and dethatching in the fall months, there’s much lawn care to be done. There are certain seasonal lawn diseases you’ll need to keep your eye on, such as fairy rings and necrotic ring spots.
Between these processes, as well as additional ones such as fertilization and overseeding your lawn in the relevant seasons, you’ll have your time spend maintaining your lawn cut out for you. When you’re doing all of this on your own, you’ll likely be that one in 5 that doesn’t enjoy maintaining their lawn.
Due to the sheer amount of work that is necessary to adequately maintain your lawn, many homeowners are seeking alternatives of sorts. In fact, many homeowners are now shifting away from lawns entirely. These homeowners are now opting to replace their lawns with artificial turf that does not require nearly as much maintenance if any at all.
However, before you get ready to rip out your lawn to replace it with costly artificial turf, there are some things you need to know! There are many benefits to having a lawn on your property, from raising the value of your home to helping reduce urban water wastage.
Before we discuss the benefits of hiring a professional lawn care service, we are going to look at a few reasons why your lawn is important and the benefits thereof.
7 Reasons You Should Have a Lawn
While maintaining a lawn may seem like a tedious chore, there are many benefits of having a lawn on your property. When that lawn is properly maintained – whether you maintain your lawn yourself or hire a professional lawn care service to do it – it can reap even more benefits for you and the environment you live in. These are the benefits of the grass on your property!
#1 Your Lawn Can Help Clean the Air Around You
Like other plants, your lawn plays a crucial role in absorbing carbon dioxide and subsequently releasing oxygen. Whenever humans breathe in oxygen, we release carbon dioxide – almost the exact opposite of what plants do with these gasses. Lawns play a critical role in cleaning the air around us and have many benefits for both homeowners and the general environment.
It is important that grass traps the carbon dioxide. If it didn’t, the excess amount of carbon dioxide in the air could have a negative effect on the environment, from raised temperatures to other environmental dangers. Your lawn is helping your environment!
#2 Your Lawn Can Help Your Allergies
Unless you’re allergic to the grass itself, your lawn can actually help your allergies! This is because grass not only helps the environment by trapping carbon dioxide, but it also helps trap dust. This means that it can help prevent allergy attacks as a result of dust particles you would be breathing in.
Your lawn even takes it a step further! By trapping dust, your lawn results in a cleaner area around you. You might notice your car takes longer to get dirty and dusty, or your windows are lasting longer after each wash. By trapping dust, your lawn can help clean your home free of dust.
#3 Your Lawn Can Absorb Excess Water
In If there’s one thing you take from this list, it should be that lawns are absorbent. In addition to carbon dioxide and dust, lawns are also great at absorbing excess water. This is especially crucial in urban environments in order to preserve water resources and prevent unnecessary wastage.
When you have a lawn, the water will soak into the soil and could even protect you from flooding due to excess water. However, if you were to remove your lawn and replace it with an alternative, the excess water would likely wash some of these materials away during a storm, especially if you’re using something like gravel in the place of a lawn.
#4 Your Lawn Can Help Filter Water
Lawns do more than simply absorb excess water, such as stormwater, and prevent urban water wastage. Your lawn actually helps to filter the water for potentially toxic chemicals therein. These chemicals could eventually seep into the groundwater and could have negative effects on the nearby environment.
You may think that groundwater is no big deal and won’t affect you directly, but it could have serious implications. In fact, statistics show that 51% of the total population of the United States relies on groundwater as a supply for drinking water. In addition to this, estimates show that 68% of groundwater is used as a water source for irrigating crops. Therefore, your lawn does its part in protecting the environment you live in!
#5 Your Lawn Can Improve Your Soil Structure
Lawns help combat the problem that is compacted soil. This type of soil is characterized by soil that has been heavily compacted or pressed together, resulting in a reduction of the pore space between the soil particles. This results in the rate of both water infiltration and drainage being heavily reduced.
By having a well-maintained lawn, you can ensure that your soil structure remains porous, meaning it has plenty of pores to allow for the adequate draining of excess water. This means that your soil will be capable of replenishing groundwater supplies through means of proper drainage.
#6 Your Lawn Can Help Reduce Noise Pollution Around You
Did you know that lawns can help you like a quieter, more stress-free life? Well, they can! If you’ve ever been to a busy city, you know how loud it can be, from the cars to the people to the birds ahead. There’s a reason the city sounds noisier than neighboring suburban areas, and it’s not just because they are busier in general.
It’s because there are a greater number of solid surfaces for sounds to bounce off, making it seem even noisier than it is. A lawn has the opposite effect and can actually reduce noise by roughly 10 decibels. When your lawn is reducing the noise from people, animals, and vehicles around you, you’ll be happy you decided to keep it!
#7 Your Lawn Can Keep You Cool by Lowering the Temperature
In addition to everything else your lawn does – as discussed in the points above – it can also keep you cool. Now that’s pretty cool! Grassy areas, such as your lawn, absorb the heat of the sun to use it for photosynthesis processes. The heat that builds up due to these processes only gets released in the evenings.
This means that your lawn – and the lawns of your neighbors – can help moderate the temperature of your area. Surfaces like the pavement, however, just get hotter while the sun is out. In the summertime, you’ll be thankful for your lawn. You might be even more thankful if you don’t have to tend to it yourself, then you can just reap the benefits…
10 Reasons to Hire Professional Lawn Care
As we established above, there are many great advantages to having a lawn: from keeping you cool to ensuring runoff water isn’t wasted, the list goes on! The only disadvantage is that you have to maintain a lawn. Or do you? Here are the top 10 reasons you should hire a professional lawn care service!
#1 It Will Save Time for What Really Matters
As discussed earlier in this article, the statistic of how long the average homeowner spends tending to their lawn is probably much higher when you don’t factor in those who do not have lawns. By investing in a professional lawn care service, you can save yourself a lot of time for what really matters to you while leaving your lawn in highly capable hands.
Tending to a lawn is a job that doesn’t stop! From weed control in the summer to lawn disease prevention and control in winter, from aerating and dethatching in autumn to fertilizing in spring, the job never stops. In this fast-paced world that we live in, you can get more out of your day when you don’t have to worry about maintaining the grass on your property.
#2 It Will Save Energy for What Really Matters
Not only will hiring a professional lawn care service save you time for those things that really matter to you, but it will leave energy for you to actually enjoy those things! When you consider all of the different aspects that encompass maintaining a lawn, you realize how much physical labor these processes truly demand from us.
By hiring a professional service to maintain your lawn, you’re saving yourself from having to spend all of that energy. Think about it: you have a job, and when you come home, you don’t want to spend more of your energy doing manual labor. When it comes down to a professional service, it’s literally their job to tend to your lawn, and they enjoy what they do…so let them!
#3 Your Lawn Care Will Be Perfectly Tailored to Your Lawn
The necessary lawn care processes may vary between different regions and areas. Not only that, but lawn care can vary depending on the type of grass you have. From warm-season grasses, such as Zoysia or Centipede grass, to cool-season grasses, such as fine fescue grass or perennial ryegrass, you may not even be aware of the type of grass you have.
When you hire a professional lawn care service, you don’t need to know what type of grass you have. The lawn care service will instinctively know and will be able to tailor your lawn’s care specifically to the type of grass and your region. They’ll know what needs to be done and when it needs to be done!
#4 Your Lawn Will Always Look Its Best
First impressions are important. Often when people come to your home for the first time, the state of your lawn will form part of that first impression. In fact, according to one article in the New York Post, statistics showed that 66% of those Americans who formed part of the study revealed that they feel a sense of shame or embarrassment when their lawn is not up to par with the lawns of the neighboring houses.
If you, like many other Americans, feel embarrassed when your lawn isn’t looking its best, there’s a way to prevent that feeling. By hiring a professional lawn care service, your lawn will always be looking its best, and your first impressions – at least in terms of your lawn – will always be stellar.
Furthermore, if you tend to your own lawn, you’ll need to keep tending to it regularly for it to look its best. This means, when you get busy or need to travel, your lawn may be neglected. While you may not neglect your lawn on purpose, it could lead to your lawn making the wrong first impression. When you hire professional lawn care, your garden will look consistently great!
#5 Your Lawn Will Be Maintained with the Best Equipment
As we mentioned earlier, there are many different processes that comprise maintaining a lawn. This means that caring for your lawn is, unfortunately, not as simple as just purchasing a lawnmower. From leaf rakes to soil rakes to soil knives, there are many tools necessary to adequately keep your lawn looking lush.
When you hire a professional service, the use of their state-of-the-art equipment is included in the fee. This means that you don’t need to fork out your hard-earned money buying, maintaining, and upgrading gardening tools. Instead, you can rest assured that the gardening service you hire will have all the tools they need to keep your lawn looking healthy.
#6 Professional Lawn Care is the Safer Option
Building on the previous reason, you should hire a professional lawn care service; another added benefit of hiring a professional service is that you guarantee your own safety. Given that there are many different tools that need to be used when maintaining and tending to your lawn, there will be many different safety recommendations to be followed in terms of these tools.
When you hire a professional lawn care service, they will know exactly how to use all of their various tools in keeping your lawn looking fresh. This way, you don’t need to concern yourself with these various tools that could lead to an accidental injury when not used correctly.
#7 Your Lawn Will Benefit from the Expertise of a Professional Service
Not only will your lawn look its best, but it will also actually be thriving! That’s the goal, isn’t it? When you consider the many benefits that having a lawn offers you – from keeping you cool in the summer to helping reduce water wastage – it makes sense to have a lawn.
However, for the most part, those advantages rely on your lawn being in a healthy condition. If your soil is compacted, for example, your lawn will not be able to adequately absorb excess water. This will not only waste runoff water that would typically become groundwater but could result in you flooding your own lawn, leading to other negative effects.
By hiring a professional service, you ensure that you, your property, and your environment actually benefit from your lawn. Furthermore, in times of water scarcity and other pressing climate issues, a professional service will have the relevant eco-friendly protocols in place when tending to your lawn.
#8 You Can Envision Your Desired Lawn, They’ll Craft It
When it comes to your home, you have a particular vision for it. This vision naturally extends from your home’s interior spaces to the exterior areas. When it comes down to these exterior spaces, such as your lawn and garden, you have a certain picture in mind for how you want it to look.
When you hire professional lawn care, you are hiring a service that can help you turn your unique vision into a reality. This isn’t simply about making a good first impression where your lawn is concerned but actually having a lawn that you yourself are proud of, a lawn that aligns with your vision of your perfect lawn.
#9 Your Lawn Can Boost the Value of Your Home
Having a lawn that you are proud of and that makes a good impression has another benefit! Your lawn, when it’s looking its best, can actually raise the value of your home if you’re looking to sell it. In fact, Clemson University revealed findings that even a small increase in the landscaping of your home – which includes maintaining your lawn – could increase the overall resale value of your property by up to 7%.
It doesn’t have to stop there, however! If more time and money you essentially invest into your home’s landscaping needs, the more you will increase the resale value. Luckily, thanks to the existence of professional lawn care services, you don’t need to invest time and money into your property’s landscaping – you could just invest some time.
You may be thinking that hiring a professional service to tend to your lawn may cost more than simply doing it all yourself, but that is not true! Not only will a professional service increase the value of your property, but it could also save you money along the way!
#10 A Professional Service Could Actually Save You Money
At the end of the day, you need to make the decision for your lawn that is most cost-effective for you and your budget. However, what if we told you that you could save money in the long run when you hire a professional lawn care service? Because you can!
Tending to a lawn is an underestimated process. Many homeowners do not know just how much work needs to go into a lawn. From the tools and equipment you’ll need to the products such as fertilizer you need to buy, these aspects all add up over time. If you decide to buy these yourself, you’ll need to have faith that you use them properly.
If you were to make an error while tending to your lawn – such as over or underwatering it – you might need to spend even more of your hard-earned cash correcting these issues. When you hire a professional to take care of your lawn, these products and the use of the tools and equipment are included in your fee – all of that, and they’ll know how to properly use them!
Conclusion
In this article, we looked at the many reasons you should hire professional lawn care. From saving money in the long term to boosting the overall resale value of your property, there are many great financial benefits of hiring a lawn care service. Not only that, but your lawn will be the lawn of your dreams, lush and thriving, always sure to make a great first impression!
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