When building a house, the most important aspect of the construction is the foundation and the same applies with commercial landscaping. If you can establish a solid foundation with Fall planting, you’ll have greater success in the Spring.
Naturally in Houston, Fall is one of the more generous times of the year for your commercial landscape. When planting in the Fall, you will establish healthy root growth. This will ensure that in the Spring your new plants and trees will be ready to flush out beautifully. In the Fall, the focus is on planting shrubs and trees. These are the kind of plants that set the stage for Spring planting by creating a healthy backdrop of shrubs, evergreens, and trees. Anything that you plant in the foreground of the landscape will just be that much more enhanced.
Ninety percent of the commercial landscaping issues in Houston are related to soil and water. The most important nutrient or element for plants is oxygen, just like us. Even if we have all our Vitamins, if we can’t breathe, we won’t survive. In Houston we suffer from lack of oxygen in the root zone. We have very heavy clay soils and we tend to over water which compounds problems in the root zone. In the Fall, by mixing in a good aerated soil with high porosity and a lot of oxygen between the molecules you enable the plants to flourish and succeed in the root zone which leads to greater above ground growth.
Selecting shrubs and trees that will look good in the Fall when planted and wonderful once Spring arrives, can be important for many commercial real estate buildings. Evergreen plants will keep their leaves all year long and deciduous trees will drop their leaves. In Houston, we have such a mild climate that sometimes we can have deciduous plants hold onto their leaves all year long. By covering plants in the Winter and protecting the root zone with mulch, you can help the plant to keep its leaves all year long. These best practices will create an advantage over plants planted in the Spring because those plants have to catch up through the stress of Summer. Our Springs are notorious for going from nice weather to hot just like that, which puts a lot of stress on the plant. Again, having a healthy foundation of roots allows everything above ground to be that much healthier and beautiful.