Landscaping – Not Just for Curb Appeal

In this day and age, property owners will go to great lengths to ensure their safety and protect their property, often through the installation of alarm and monitoring systems.  To  add an extra layer of protection around your property, a great way to help ensure personal and property security while also maintaining a beautiful landscape is the planting and maintenance of strategically-placed plants and bushes surrounding your business.  With the right landscaping, you can reduce or completely eliminate all of a burglar’s access points, making it more likely that they will change their mind and leave your property untouched.

Just like motion detectors and dead bolts, the placement of a prickly plant or a holly bush can help keep burglars out of your business.  Property owners can motivate intruders to stay out without turning the outside of their business property into a fortified castle with a moat.

Environmental design can make a commercial property less appealing to burglars who are usually lazy and adverse to pain. Plants with thorns or sharp leaves present a perimeter that few will enter.  Landscaping and plants should not function as an aid by becoming a screen to shield them from view when entering a walkway or breaking in to a building.

Fences, walkways, and plantings set psychological and physical boundaries to stay away.  A good place for a thorny shrub is underneath a window. Windows are easy access but thorns can help burglars away. The height of the shrub also shouldn’t create a hiding place either.  Do make sure that the shrubs are cut below the window in case you have to escape a fire. Proper air circulation and access for maintenance can be provided if you allow some distance between the shrub and the wall of the building.

Law enforcement also suggests the “3-7 rule,” which says to trim bushes down to three feet and have no tree limbs lower than seven feet. The cut-down shrubs provide no cover and the chopped limbs keeps burglars from climbing trees to get to higher access points.  Just as ladders shouldn’t be left outside, neither should garden tools or bricks which can be used to smash a window to gain access. A trellis that could support someone’s weight could be inviting to someone eager to sneak in to a second floor or across a security fence.

If you are interested in securing your commercial property through the installation of strategically-placed plants, bushes or trees, let LMC’s landscaping experts handle the project so you can focus on your business. Contact LMC at 713-462-3261 or request a visit from their landscape team.

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