The Ultimate Lawn and Landscaping Guide to Property Managers for the Austin Area

This is the ultimate lawn and landscaping guide for making smart and intelligent property management choices in Austin, Texas.

We have helped a lot of property managers in Austin, Texas make the right choices for their property needs. With our years of industry experience, this guide will help you shine! You will not find this anywhere else. We compiled the very best ways to save you money without cutting corners. "Work smarter, not harder," a wiseman once said. This will be updated every time we find a smart and intelligent way to guide the discerning property manager in the Austin area.

Roof and Siding Clearance

Clearance! Clearance! And more clearance! Overgrown trees can sometimes break, snap, and fall which can damage a house's roof, siding, and windows, and even hurt people. Letting trees grow without adequate maintenance will not save a few hundred dollars. Eventually the trees fail and the owner ends up spending a few thousands more on repairing the damages the overgrown trees have caused. Then, the property manager gets in trouble for neglecting to remind of obvious issues.

Fallen Tree in Austin

Afterall, who else would the property owner and tenant blame? It is you, the property manager. This problem can be significantly lessen by making sure to remind the owner of the need for yearly pruning. Prune back trees, shrubs, and hedges away from the house's siding, windows, and roof line, no matter how low or high. Pruning will create clearance for natural movements during inclement weather and lessen preventable repairs. It also makes maintenance around the property easier as crews are able to move around more freely. For taller trees, make sure to have the crossed branches, dead branches, and foliage trimmed to lessen the chances of the trunk breaking or debris from falling. This tip will save you a lot of headache sometime down the road and is a smart and intelligent property management choice on any property you may have in and around the Austin area.

Do Not Fight Nature

This backyard does not have an irrigation system. The lawn to the right hand side naturally propagates, while the lawn to the left hand side had receded due to shade.

Using lighter colored gravel will give a cleaner look while at the same time improve the desirability of the property at a fraction of the price of getting rid of the shade and installing new sods. This specific project only cost $500 installed.

A good rule of thumb is to let nature guide your landscape. Sure, a lush and green lawn with plenty of beautiful flowering plants is ideal. But what to do if you took over a property with an already half-dead lawn, and the owner does not want to spend a lot of money? There is a balance to be made here. The property you are handling will not be successful on the market if nobody wants it. This happens all too often. A property manager typically has two quick workarounds. The easiest workaround to properties with a half-dead and receding lawn is to discount the property, reduce fees and subsequent yearly revenues. This may not give the optimum results a property manager wants to have. The expensive workaround is to fight back and reclaim the lawn. Not that the lawn can not be reclaimed by transplanting new grass, but that doing so can cost thousands of dollars more than when you just let it go. Eventually one learns to become more creative with what to do with the dead space. This is the third workaround we want to offer. The smarter and intelligent property management choice is to tackle this problem not with reduced prices, but to sell on and increase value. By replacing the dead and patchy lawn areas with an appropriately size rock or gravel, we can create a focal point for a family area. Smaller diameter rock or gravel is ideal for flat backyards as they can easily be compacted. It is also very comfortable to walk on. For areas with steeper slopes, and you will find more of these in west and north Austin areas, use larger rocks or boulders to slow down the velocity of water. This will lessen soil movement and erosion.

If rain water flows a certain direction, do not obstruct it, but rather work around it and go with the flow. While larger rocks and boulders can help with erosion, they can be very difficult to walk on. You can lay flagstones to create pathways when you need the slope to be functional. On areas where literally nothing grows, you can typically skip on laying weed fabric before laying the stones to save you money on installation. Since nothing grows there even with bare soil, you do not have to worry about weeding in the future. For areas with patches, lay some fabric or cardboard boxes to keep unwanted vegetation in check. In our experience, we have seen tenants bring in trampolines, children's playgrounds complete with slides and swings, and at times picnic tables upon moving in. A clean backyard with a large functional space, therefore, can add a lot of value and is a smart and intelligent property management choice.

Know Your Lawn

Knowing whether or not your property's lawn has a sprinkler system is crucial to a property manager's overall strategy. Make sure to fertilize the lawn with organic fertilizers and apply a treatment of actively aerated compost tea at least once in every month of May, July, September, and November for a lusher, greener lawn if and only if you already have an in-ground sprinkler system or somebody is hand watering frequently. Sprinklers and hand watering help keep the lawn moist and lessen the chances of it from receding. A thick healthy lawn will also prevent weeds from taking in the first place and eventually germinating. Lawns that are well-watered benefit the most from optimal nutrient and beneficial bacterial levels. Maintaining the lawn is a smart and intelligent choice as a property manager because the key and very important factor for lawn propagation, which is watering, is already present.

Lawns with sprinkler systems will benefit the most from regular fertilization because water is very important to soil health and in keeping aerobic conditions.

Lawns without a sprinkler system generally do not achieve the same level of grass germination and uniformity as those found in irrigated lawns even when fertilized regularly.

If ever your property's lawn does NOT have a sprinkler system or nobody is able to hand water it completely, then let nature do what nature does. Lawns in this specific category will most often have unwanted vegetation, or what we typically call "weeds". And it can be very hard to achieve the results of those found in lawns with a sprinkler system. So unless somebody plans to hand water weekly or the owner plans to install a sprinkler system, we do not recommend organic fertilization and actively aerated compost tea treatment at all. Not that they will not help the lawn because they actually will improve nutrient and beneficial microbial levels, but because the lawn is already self sufficient as it currently stands, why bother? The vast majority of lawns that are being hand watered regularly or have a sprinkler system will recede and eventually die without irrigation. Yours won't die.

It is already self-sufficient. But should your prospective tenants change their minds and decide to care for having the best irrigation-free green lawn, then go ahead with adding fertilization and actively aerated compost tea treatment as part of the yearly maintenance. Otherwise, if getting the best irrigation-free green lawn is not the priority, then the smart and intelligent choice is to simply leave the lawn as it is and just get it mowed more frequently. Sometimes, just having a professionally mowed lawn is enough to make prospective tenants happy. This is us speaking from the heart and what property managers have told us through the years, not some marketing quackery.

Got Leaves?

Rental property in north Austin with deciduous trees.

Knowing when the property has deciduous trees or evergreen is a crucial part of being a property manager. A sure telltale sign of deciduous trees is that they shed leaves. Look at the lawn and plant beds and look for leaves, if you got leaves, then know to avoid using mulch or larger rocks like river rocks as ground covers. Leaves will stick to mulch, making them harder to rake, blow clean, and vacuum. On larger rocks , on the other hand, leaves tend to get stuck in crevices and spaces in between the rocks that make them not only harder to rake, blow clean, and vacuum, but also close to impossible to be cleaned thoroughly. Both cases will increase the labor involved when it is time for a cleanup.

Yes, you may be able to get away with not cleaning up immediately. But with time, leaves will eventually accumulate beyond manageable levels. Tenants will then complain of bugs, spiders, cockroaches, and even snakes, then move out, and then you are now stuck with a vacant property and a huge mess. Maybe this may not happen to you, and the property simply goes on sale. Still, cleanup is highly recommended if not required for a successful turnaround. The smarter and intelligent approach to properties with deciduous trees is to leave the plant bed with either bare soil or use finer, smaller rocks or gravel as ground cover. Both approach will make it so much easier to rake, blow clean, and vacuum; thereby significantly lowering the cost of cleanup. Finer and smaller rock and gravel gets compacted over time and do not get suctioned or blown away very easily. Leaves, on the contrary, do get blown away easily and vacuumed quickly. And any service provider that has been in the industry for quite sometime will be quick to identify the price difference between the two. If you do not see a significant price decrease, text, call, chat, or email us. We can help you.

Wild Vegetation is Your Friend

In the course of your career as a property manager, you will find some tenants who absolutely love gardening and can create the plant beds of your dreams. But you will also quickly realize that the vast majority of tenants simply do not care at all. And since nobody can control what tenants will and will not do when they move in, why not just let the wild vegetation grow on the plant beds, and let nature run its course? Unless there is an HOA master plant list on your deed restricted community, letting wild vegetation grow is a huge blessing. For one, wild vegetation does not need human intervention to grow. You do not need to fertilize the plants. There is also no need for cultivation, weeding, and watering. You have eliminated 99% of the work of maintaining the plant beds. No need for selective pruning, for shaping, for making sure the foliage is straight, round, or square. As you can see in the photo, the wild vegetation in Austin does not look all that shabby. We have flowering plants like Texas lantana, bluebonnet, spiderwort, betony, snakewort, violets, wooly stemodia, and many more.

Wild Vegetation in South Austin

Isn't making wild vegetation a friend, rather than an enemy, the smarter and intelligent solution to the common problem? When the time comes that the property becomes vacant, all you need to tell your service provider is to cut it back with a lawn mower or a weed eater. The vegetation will simply grow back the following year. This lessens the cost of maintenance and upkeep while retaining a comparable curb appeal. The BEST of both worlds. What we have not mentioned yet is what wild vegetation does to the local ecosystem. Wild vegetation adds food and shelter to butterflies, honeybees, earthworms, microbes, insects, and birds. You will also notice wild vegetation is being used at the Austin parks around downtown Austin. And if wild vegetation is good enough for our city parks, why would it not be good for the property you manage?

Native and Adapted Plants Give Diversity

If wild vegetation is too wild for your taste, then stick with plants that are native and have adapted locally. The city of Austin has a booklet as a resource guide for a quick refresher. For a more intensive list, the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower center is very hard to beat. The local industry typically conducts conventions and local training at their Southwest Austin location. Native and adapted plants are chosen because they are hardy to our local climate, are not invasive, and fits in the local flora and fauna. Using native and adapted plants gives you more control in adding plant variety to the plant beds. Similar to wild vegetation, these plants do not need a lot of human intervention. While all native and adapted plants do need to be fertilized when being planted and again 3 months later, very little fertilization is needed once they are established. Some may need to be pruned back once a year, and others may not need pruning at all. It just depends on the native and adapted plants you pick. If you need guidance, chat with us 24/7. We can help.

We hope to have helped you become a wiser and more verse property manager. Make sure to bookmark this page as this compilation will be updated for the years to come. Visit us often for more tips and tricks around your lawn and landscaping. Should you ever need our help, just let us know. We are here for you.