GARDEN AND LANDSCAPE MAINTENANCE: SO MUCH MORE THAN MOW AND BLOW

Garden Maintenance in all photos by Van Leeuwen Green Horticultural Services. Photography by Izaak Todd

“We love maintaining these gardens because we know exactly why each plant has been chosen and what to expect from them in the short and long term."

Hendrik Van Leeuwen of Van Leeuwen Green Horticultural Services is passionate about making sure you don't leave garden maintenance as an afterthought. Here he discusses the three main areas of maintenance and garden services that Landscaping Victoria Master Landscaper Members, such as Van Leeuwen Green, provide to make sure their clients have stunning, dynamic gardens, year after year.

As the owner of a landscape business that does everything from construction to garden renovation and maintenance, I would say that our garden maintenance division does the most important and long-lasting work for our clients. Our maintenance teams treat gardens and landscapes as living, dynamic systems which inevitably change. Gardens must be monitored, cared for and understood in terms of their original design and how this design evolves over time. Keeping a garden neat and tidy is still very important but after spending thousands on design, build and planting, maintenance must be a lot more than just cutting grass and firing up the leaf blower!

There are three main areas where Landscaping Victoria Gardener Members provide maintenance and gardening services.

The first comes after we provide input into the design, especially the plant selection, and we’re ready to maintain these gardens.

This happens once we’ve completed construction and the plants are in the ground. We know exactly what the client wants to achieve from the landscape and importantly, we have a good handle on how this landscape might change over time and how this will affect maintenance. For example, when trees go in the ground it can take several years for them to grow tall enough to start shading other plants. We’ll be there to prune and shape trees as they grow but also to replace any plants that may not be coping with the increased shade.

It’s this critical plant knowledge that tells us how plants interact with each other over time that professional gardeners pride themselves on. The second scenario for high quality maintenance is where we provide a garden renovation service.

This is where we go to an existing garden and provide a major refresh of the whole landscape, focusing on transforming the space with new plantings. This usually involves removing plants that are dead, diseased or damaged or are simply no longer providing the delight (such as seasonal flowering) that they once did. These gardens often have no design history and our job is to effectively provide a new design, worked through with clients as we walk and discuss changes in the garden itself.

We love maintaining these gardens because we know exactly why each plant has been chosen and what to expect from them in the short and long term.

The last scenario is where we provide landscape maintenance for existing gardens with no landscape construction or renovation taking place.

In this situation we find that many clients are happy with the garden as it is but still want our gardeners to make suggestions for change and renewal over a period of months or years. Here it is important to build a relationship with the garden and the client over time, focusing on the essential tasks of weeding, mulching, pruning and mowing/blowing and offering advice and suggestions as they work through the landscape.

This long-term attention to detail is at the heart of high-quality garden maintenance and it applies to the smallest courtyard through to large, historic gardens.

This brings us to the importance of developing formal landscape management and maintenance plans. This is a service that involves systematic documentation of landscape goals and objectives. An example of this is Van Leeuwen Green’s relationship with the heritage Stonington Mansion gardens. For several years we had completed expansive renovation work at these beautiful gardens. I was extremely proud of what our maintenance teams had achieved there, using real gardening skills and plant knowledge to bring Stonington’s grounds back to life.

But what was missing was a solid documentation of goals, objectives and how to keep it all going through a well written landscape management plan. We commissioned Lia De Gruchy, a graduate of Burnley Horticultural College, to write a management and maintenance plan for the Stonington gardens. This plan now guides our on-going maintenance work here and helps us work towards a longterm vision for the landscape. This plan was praised by the Landscaping Victoria judges who awarded Van Leeuwen Green the Management and Maintenance award in 2015.

So, my strongest message about garden maintenance is, don’t make it an afterthought! And remember that the best landscape maintenance staff are qualified Landscaping Victoria Master Landscaper Members who will care for a garden for years - and sometimes for decades - to come.