Professional Landscaping In Calgary Monitoring Your Underground Sprinkler System

To maintain their landscaping, Calgary residents and businesses need to make sure to maintain their underground sprinkler systems. Keeping the sprinklers in good condition ensures plants get the water they need and the system runs efficiently without any leaks. Yet, even with the best maintenance, leaks and other problems can occur. Monitoring helps detect problems early.

Monitor These Areas

What should you monitor when it comes to your sprinkler system?

Check your water bill and compare it to the same month last year. If you have seen a noticeable increase in use, you may have a leak somewhere in the sprinkler system. This happens due to freeze/thaw cycling, faulty sprinkler heads or infiltration blockage. In any case, if you suspect your system has a leak, you should have it checked out and have any repairs made before you use it again.

Watch your system in action. This is a part of maintaining the landscaping Calgary residents and business owners often neglect. Start with making sure each sprinkler head is working. You want to make sure all the heads are providing the pattern and coverage you want. Make sure each section in the sprinkler system is getting a steady flow of water. You may notice some areas getting too much water or too little water.

Check the system’s supply and drain valves and makes sure they are functioning properly. Wait to do this after a series of dry days. You want the soil to dry out a bit. Look under the valves and make sure they are dry also. If these valves are leaking, the soil will be damp when the rest of the area is dry.

Check for perpetually wet areas. If you have an underground leak, the ground around the leak will be saturated, no matter what. You may not see standing water, but the grass or plants may be drowning due to excessive water.

Performing routine maintenance can prevent problems or catch them when they are minor. Doing a spring check-up will make sure the system did not sustain damage during the winter and that it is ready for the coming growing season. Check each sprinkler head and make sure its in good shape. Make sure the ground is thawed to beneath the sprinkler system before starting it up for the first time.

If you suspect that your sprinkler system may have some major problems, you need to contact a professional landscaping company to handle the repairs. They can find the problem and fix it faster than most homeowners. Plus, they can check the rest of the system and be sure its ready for summer. Contact us here at Mirage Landscaping. We install, maintain, and repair sprinklers in the landscaping Calgary homes and businesses have.

Landscaping Services And Maintenance – What Are The Options

Landscaping may sound rather serious but it can actually be anything
from simple border arrangements to a complete garden re- design. Whether
you have a small garden or a large estate, landscaping it properly is a
great way to make better use of space. In fact, landscaping can prove
to be more useful for those with smaller areas to work with. If you use
the appropriate flowers, trees and shrubs this will give you a beautiful
outside area for your home and can even enhance its value if done
properly and professionally.

Landscape Maintenance: What Do You Need?

You
may have just started considering your options and if that is the case,
you may be a little overwhelmed. It can be confusing and complex to
decide on the right options for your home or business but rest assured,
we are here to help you. You need to work with what you have but you
also need to consider options of expansion or more importantly how best
to use the space in a practical way.

If you are a keen gardener
then you may want to opt for more borders and shrubs but if you aren’t
so keen on the green finger hobby then you might prefer a more patio
based area with various types of gravel, flagstones or at least easy to
manage lawns.

Thinking about what you need is the first step,
then you need to consider what you want; after all, what is the point in
employing a landscaper in if you are not going to appreciate the work
done?

What about commercial landscaping?

Commercial
landscaping is more suitable to businesses that have an outside area
they want to look attractive for arriving clients or employees. First
impressions are important and if your business office is located in
beautiful surroundings that are well maintained, it does make a
difference.

When it comes to commercial landscaping, you should
consider clean lines, simplicity and a modern approach. This will ensure
that it does not eat into your budget for maintenance but offers an
attractive enough approach to your business premises. To get an idea of
what you want you can look at landscaping pictures online or give us a
call for some free advice.

If you are not ready to embark on a
landscaping project then you could consider a simple lawn service, which
would improve the look of your garden or grounds without all the
expense of landscaping. Lawn care is important and lawn maintenance can
be very affordable with the current equipment and procedures. If this
option is not that attractive you could consider artificial turf that
has come on leaps and bounds in recent years.

For more information about landscaping about lawn maintenance, head over to and check out our landscaping services or call us.

Fall Landscaping Checklist

Summer has come to an end. Temperatures are cooling off, and soil is moistening. This season is the perfect time to work on lawn maintenance and prepare your Nashville home for winter and, subsequently, the next growing season. Many people have used up all their excitement about landscaping and gardening since the spring, but autumn is a valuable time as well. The following checklist will help you do so effectively.
Mow the lawn. In the fall and winter, it is preferable to have your grass cut short, to around 1 inches. Short grass is less prone to disease and lets leaves blow around without trapping them.
Rake, rake, rake. Raking leaves in the fall (and probably having kids and pets jump around in your neat piles) is a task few people have never done. Throughout autumn, you will need to rake the fallen leaves. Leaving the leaves there will smother your lawn and block sunlight.
Fertilize. Fall is a critical time for feeding your lawn and garden. The summer months can be taxing and rebuilding is crucial. With less competition from weeds, diseases, and pests, fertilizer will help to restore and prepare your landscape. High phosphorous mix will encourage roots.
Aerate your lawn. Making the soil less compact, doing this allows nutrients and water to reach deeper to the roots of your plants. This is most necessary particularly if you are seeing rainfall pool on the surface; however, it is a good practice in general for lawn health and maintenance.
Trim trees and prune plants. Remove thin branches, crossover branches, and dead branches. Also, check for any branches that could fall and cause damage if it gets highly windy and remove those branches as well. Cut these cracked, dead, damaged, loose, and otherwise precarious close to the trunk. Pruning back bushes, shrubs, and plants is also important.
Winterize your sprinkler system. This will become more critical as we get further into the fall and closer to winter, but by the time the weather gets freezing, it is absolutely necessary that you do this. Standing water will cause cracks and breaks if it freezes and can potentially ruin your irrigation system. You will need to shut off the water and use pressurized air to blow the pipes dry.
Plant bulbs that will bloom in the spring as well as shrubs. Fall is an ideal time for planting shrubs. During this season, they are able to establish roots in the moister, cooler soil and will thus grow better as time goes on. Additionally, plant spring bulbs now so that you can enjoy their beauty later, when they bloom in the spring. >

The points on this checklist are critical to preparing your garden for the upcoming winter and ensuring that it continues to thrive in future growing seasons. Do not forget about your outdoor space in these autumn months. Go along with this checklist and your landscaping life will be significantly easier in future seasons.

The History Of Landscaping

Mayans lined walkways leading to their temples with intricate plants and flowers, the Romans created courtyard gardens within the boundaries of their properties for the enjoyment of their family and friends, and royalty would plant profuse amounts of flowers and trees as a symbol of their wealth. In the 17th century in Jamaica, slave plantation owners would line the walkways to their mansions with Royal Palms. Throughout history, landscaping was used as a sign of not only beauty, but also wealth, power and respect.
Hardscaping is the use of the terrain itself, or rocks and stones brought in from other places. Nowadays it’s mostly just rocks and stone walls for aesthetics, but hardscaping was also used for practical purposes. The most obvious example of this is the Great Wall of China. Qin Shi Huang unified all the states of China in 221 B.C. and to block invasions from the Xiongnu people in the north, ordered that the wall be built to help protect his new borders from enemies. Of course in this case hardscaping was completely utilitarian.
Another example of hardscaping is the mystical Stonehenge of England. The mystery of these rocks is that though they are in England now, they actually came from Whales, which means that the builders somehow transported these rocks over 200 miles. This has led to many theories of everything from aliens to astronomical miracles. Most likely these creators were just very dedicated (or well-paid) individuals committed to finishing the product.
Nowadays, from the San Joaquin Valley of California to New York’s Hudson Valley, landscaping and hardscaping are now used for personal homes and commercial businesses as a way to improve the quality of peoples’ physical surroundings and to give a sense of nature in an increasingly material world.