Outdoor Pride News

Fall landscapes explode with color if planted with the right trees and shrubs. Choosing carefully can extend the seasonal joy into October, November and December. Now is the time to get these plants and trees into the ground.

Yellow Trees

“Obviously, maples are a great choice,” said Cheryl Lajoie, an advanced certified horticulturalist. The Sugar Maple (Acer saccharum) has the most vivid yellow fall glow, Lajoie said.

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The Japanese Maple

is a small, slow-growing laceleaf that becomes flame-colored with yellow/orange and red fall foliage.

Lajoie also recommended Bottlebrush buckeye ,which usually grows about 10 to 15 feet tall and wide, has creamy, off-white spring blooms and golden yellow fall foliage. She also likes Ginkgo Autumn Gold .

Another colorful tree is the Chinese Pistache, which starts off yellow/green, then brilliant orange, then turns red.

A nice dark red, a russet red to true red, can be found in gardens with a White Oak (Quercus alba).

SHRUBS

Yellows

Hartlage Wine’ Sweetshrub has bold foliage, showy, wine red flowers and good yellow fall color.

Serviceberry has fall color that ranges from yellow to orange to red. Cultivated varieties are often more brilliant.

Reds:

Red hues can be found in Red Chokeberry . This deciduous, sun-loving native shrub grows slowly, 6 to 10 feet tall and  3 by 4 feet wide. It develops spectacular autumn color and red berry clusters.

Purples

The royal hue is found in the Snowcap Indian Hawthorn , whose leaves  darken to burgundy as the months cool.

Great Residential Landscape Design is inherently about creating unique, functional, and intuitively inviting outdoor living spaces which require an absolute minimum of care. Professional landscape design creates comfortable, harmonious, and aesthetically pleasing areas for entertaining, recreation, and relaxation.Conceived for your specific needs and preferences to render the exact outdoor environment you might imagine and desire, a well planned and skillfully executed landscape design will contribute years of beauty and pleasure to your home, enhance a lifestyle, and add real value to your property.

Letter From Our Customer:

I wanted to take this opportunity to express how pleased we are with the final result of our patio area.  When we moved into our new home in October 2009, the backyard (off of the walkout basement) was grass and a few stones that the previous owner used as a walkway…we wanted much more.  We went to the NH Home Show in Durham in early 2010 in search of the right company to accomplish what we were looking for.  We met a representative from Outdoor Pride Landscaping, along with multiple other landscaping companies, and invited them to assess the area, discuss options, and offer estimates.

Mike showed up on time and fully prepared.  He listened to our thoughts, added his experience and know-how, and returned later with a sketch of what our future patio could look like.  He incorporated some additional nice touches that we welcomed.  His ideas not only added to the look, but made the space much more user friendly.

We decided to go with Outdoor Pride vs. the other companies for several reasons:

1. Mike’s hands-on approach (he met us several times to review the difference between the pavers and patiently helped us decide on the right paver, color, and size that would best fit our yard).
2. Design ideas (size, shape, location, etc . as well as relocation of existing shrubs to maximize the overall  area)
3. Value (very fair price for excellent quality workmanship)
4. Follow up (always returned calls and/or emails quickly)

In the end, we have been absolutely thrilled with the patio, sitting wall, and fire pit.  The team was great to work with; the customers’ utmost satisfaction is their goal.  They were willing to make minor last minute adjustments as we got further into the project and decided to tweak things slightly.  They even moved the hot tub we had in our garage to its new location by the patio.  In addition to all this, they recently came back to reseed the area where the seed did not take due to the hot weather.

Thanks for a job well done and feel free to give out our contact information to potential clients.
Stephen and Laura C.

Whenever the topic of native perennial plants comes up there almost always follows a discussion on where to obtain them. Do we go to a field and locate wild populations to dig? What, then, are we to do?

 You might be surprised to find that a garden consisting solely of natives isn’t as limiting as you might imagine. Some areas of North America have a breathtaking diversity of plant life. It has been estimated that in the temperate world, the eastern United States is second only to China in botanical diversity. Native plants offer a vast array of colors, shapes and textures. With beautiful displays of flowers and foliage, native perennials, ornamental grasses and hardy ferns make great additions to any garden, but beauty and variety aren’t the only reasons why.

Low maintenance. Aside from regular watering during their first season, most native perennials require little maintenance. In general they’re resistant to disease and insects and do not require fertilization or protection in the winter.

Adaptability. Because soil types, light conditions and temperatures change so rapidly and vary so much throughout this region, many native perennials are able to survive in a wide range of conditions.

Hardy. They are naturally occurring in the local environment so they actually thrive even after the harshest Mid-Atlantic or New England winter.

Good for local ecosystem. By planting native plants, you are restoring part of the natural ecosystem.

A native plant is one that develops, occurs naturally, or has existed for many years in an area. These can be trees, flowers, grasses, perennials or other plants. Some of them may have adapted to a very limited range. They may have adjusted to living in unusual environments or under very harsh climates or exceptional soil conditions. Although some types of plants exist only within a very limited range, others can live in diverse areas or by adaptation to different surroundings.

North American gardeners, on the whole, are embracing their native plant heritage. A good part of the change is because native plants have become such obvious, sensible choices for today’s more ecologically focused garden. Appropriately sited native plants require no watering, no fertilizer and no pesticides. Many natives offer so much in addition to their showy blooms. Locally native plants are known as local ecotypes, and are well adapted to the soils, animals, and climate of the immediate area.

Choose the right natives and your landscapeinstallationwill shine!

- Nancy Mickey

This past summer has been great for everyone on vacation, not so great for growing grass.  Southern New Hampshire is going into its fifth week of drought with average rainfall falling short five inches.  Now is the time to help your lawn recover from the ravages of summer.  If you expect all of the lawn to grow back on its own this year, you may be in for a rude awakening.

We have found the best course of action is to aerate the lawn and over-seed with turf varieties that will be compatible with your existing turf.  Even if you do not have the death and destruction that many lawns have incurred, aerating and over- seeding is a great way to jump start the recovery process for your lawn.  Core aeration of existing turf reduces soil compaction, improves microbial activity for soil development, and reduces the barrier of thatch, allowing nutrients, oxygen, and water to enter the root zone where they will be utilized to their full potential.

Timing is essential for this practice to be successful.  The earlier that this process is initiated the greater amount of time the turf has to become established before freezing temperatures slow everything down. When cool nighttime temperatures return during late summer, the weather also blesses us with showers that help water the turf.  Many people believe that if they cannot water the turf after it is seeded they are wasting their money.  Not so.  Grass is more resilient than many give it credit for.  With the summer being so dry, I am confident the odds are in our favor for a wet fall.  The best time to aerate and over-seed is during the last week of August and the first three weeks of September.

Enough about grass!  Fall is also the best time for planting!  Take a look outside and determine how your landscape should change.  Moving plants in the fall as well as planting bulbs for the spring is what its all about.  Perhaps that dead spot of turf that happens every fourth or fifth year should be replaced with a perennial bed and a few shrubs to reduce the maintenance in the yard for the next fifteen years.

Contact us here at Outdoor Pride Landscaping Inc. Our knowledgeable staff posses the specialties to look at every aspect of your landscape, and look forward to share the challenges that you face.  We truly enjoy transforming landscapes for our customer’s satisfaction.

Outdoor Pride Landscaping Inc. Participates in

“GreenCare for Troops”

To Support Local Military Families

Outdoor Pride is participating in “GreenCare for Troops throughout southern, NH. “GreenCare for Troops” is a nationwide outreach program initiated by Project EverGreen that connects participating local lawn and landscape firms with families of the men and women away from home serving our country in the armed forces.

In announcing the new program, Michael Aquilino, Pres.  said, “Lawn and landscape maintenance becomes a definite hardship when a family’s major breadwinner is on active duty away from home. The “GreenCare for Troops” program seeks to ease this stress by helping affected families with the important task of caring for their yard and landscape.”

Families interested in registering for the “GreenCare for Troops” program should contact Outdoor Pride at 603-625-9738.  Participation is limited. To learn more, they may also access the Project EverGreen website at www.projectevergreen.com/gcft/ or call toll-free (877)758-4835.

About Outdoor Pride Landscaping Inc.:

Outdoor Pride is a full service landscape company dedicated to providing the highest quality services to commercial and residential customers throughout NH and Northern Ma since 1988.  Our services range from landscape design, landscape installation, hardscapes, estate and property grounds management, fertilization, irrigation and snow removal.

About Project EverGreen

Headquartered in New Prague, Minn., Project EverGreen is a national non-profit organization representing green industry service providers, associations, suppliers/distributors, media companies, other organizations and individuals. Project EverGreen’s mission is to preserve and enhance green space in our communities for today and future generations.

Project EverGreen is conducting a national media campaign to inform U.S. consumers on the positive effects of well-maintained green spaces, including lawns and landscapes, sports turf, golf courses and parks.

We want to thank all our troops for their efforts,

Michael Aquilino

Complaining about summer heat?   It’s about time we had a real summer!  For the past two years we have had enough rain to keep lawns without irrigation green.   This season, lawns can be separated as those who have and those who have not.  Many lawns even with irrigation are showing stress where sprinkler heads need adjusting and fine tuning to keep up with the dry conditions.

With the humidity, lawn’s can be seen with summer patch diseases starting.  Blue grass varieties of turf will first begin showing tell tale signs of stress with yellow horseshoe shaped scars that have a distinct “frog-eye” pattern.  The best remedy for such disease is to watch watering closely, allowing the turf to dry out in between irrigation cycles.  We recommend watering every other day for longer duration to promote deep rooting as the first step to help ward off the fungi from thriving.  Often aerating and seeding with resistant cultivars of turf grass is also required in the fall.

If you don’t have irrigation, you must remain diligent with your efforts to hand water when possible.  Sometimes allowing the lawn to slowly go dormant is the best solution rather than water and then let the turf grass crash and burn when you go away for a week vacation.  Turf types such as fescue handle the dormant stage easily and will bounce back into their prime once cool nighttime temperatures and moisture from Mother Nature return.

Here at Outdoor Pride Landscaping Inc. we have been having fun pruning our landscapes.  Thinning and contour pruning plants that have flowered already is best done once flowering is complete and springs growth has almost fully hardened off.  As we prune we identify the bittersweet, poison ivy, and other perennial weeds that birds have spread and cull them from the ornamentals.

With the scattered thunderstorms summer annual weeds such as crabgrass, prostrate spurge, and purslane are having a field day.  We have been busy applying vegetation control for these pesky weeds to help keep mulch beds and curbing clean and presentable.  At times, nothing beats the elbow grease required to hand weed flowers, juniper beds, and the center of shrubs.

Now is the best time to plan major landscape changes for your yard.  By the time you design and coordinate the use for your yard summer will be at a close.   Fall is the best time for planting!  We can help with all facets of your project no matter what size and scale.   As the seasons change, so should your landscape!  There are always a few plants that should be moved, divided, or just downright removed.  We hope that you are able to get out this summer and take advantage of the weather.  Don’t blink.  Soon we will be complaining of the snow!

Please feel free to contact us with any landscape questions or needs,

Don

Outdoor Pride Landscaping is happy to announce the launch of their new website.

The weather in the month of April is probably known best for occasional extremes. Looking back over the past 12 years, it’s hard not to forget early April 1997 when temperatures hit ninety degrees or the next year when we had a foot of snow on April 1. It was called the April Fool’s Day storm! In 2007 we had a spring nor’easter followed by catastrophic flooding during the first two weeks of April. To say the least, the weather in April is not always conducive to building a healthy lawn.

This year, recent sunshine has brought a burst of dandelions. This is typical as dandelions gradually show up towards the end of April and first part of May as temperatures steadily build into the 70s and 80s. With such an early spring, in some areas, the onset of dandelion germination and flowering has started much earlier and is much stronger. With the nice weather early in the season and the occasional April showers, your lawn undoubtedly has a few yellow flowers.

As part of our Earthcare program, we treat for dandelions whenever we are on your lawn. It is important to note that there is absolutely no way to prevent dandelions. They are only controlled by a chemical herbicide in which we will spot treat the next time we are at your lawn. In an effort to reduce our pesticide usage we have discontinued the practice of blanket spraying lawns with chemical herbicides and as a result you may have one or two more dandelions than you have had in the past. Please know that it is our intention and goal to completely eradicate your lawn of all weeds.

However, circumstances like weather can create a situation that is out of anybody’s control. It is a common misconception that dandelions are annual weeds and when they go to seed there will be millions of new dandelions created by the “puffballs” that float around the neighborhood. Dandelions are actually perennial weeds that come back year after year if they are not controlled. Very few of the millions of seeds you see floating around in the air will ever germinate.

We ask that if you have had one or two dandelions pop up this weekend to be patient and we will spot treat them when we are out to your home for the next treatment. If you absolutely can’t stand the sight of the yellow flowers in your lawn, you could give us a call to have us come out and spray them.

Whether you don’t mind a few dandelions or if you loathe the yellow weeds, we want you to be happy no matter what your expectations are! As part of our continued dedication to customer service we want you to be completely aware of the issues that affect your lawn on a real-time basis. This unseasonably early spring weather will create a few more issues in terms of weeds in your lawn but will also help it begin to grow a little more quickly.