April is National Lawn Care Month, and we’re celebrating at Mr. Tree! Residential lawn care isn’t just aesthetically pleasing. A healthy landscape around your home has benefits for you, your family, and the environment.

Personal Benefits

First of all, don’t discount the importance of a beautiful, tranquil place to live. Spending time outside reduces stress, improves quality of life, and helps lead to better overall health. Whether you’re a serious gardener or just want your lawn to look nice, you want your family to have access to a pleasant outdoor spot to spend time. Don’t skimp on proper lawn care for your home!

Environmental Benefits

Healthy landscapes cleanse the air and reduce air pollution just by existing.  Lawns can be up to 30 degrees cooler than asphalt, and 20 degrees cooler than bare soul. They also mitigate the effects of runoff by absorbing dirty water before it can impact water sources, and act as a sound dampener to reduce noise pollution. Not only that, but healthy landscaping provides food and shelter for birds and animals!

What makes a healthy landscape, and how can you achieve it in your home? Healthy soil, plants free of diseases and pests, and few weeds are a good indicator that your lawn is thriving. Mr. Tree’s residential lawn care services are designed to do all that as well as take care of all your aesthetic concerns, even up to debris removal.

Whatever your reason for seeking residential lawn care, Mr. Tree has over 20 years of experience in the Gainesville, FL area. Contact us today for a free estimate!

It may seem like winter just started, but spring is almost here! With the weather already warming up, it’s a good time to start getting your lawn ready for the change in seasons. Not only will you be spending more time outdoors soon, but spring is prime growing season for many types of plants. These are the things you’ll want to do now to ensure a healthy, beautiful lawn in the spring.

You should have already been removing leaves and debris from your lawn, but if you haven’t, go ahead and do that. Letting leaves, pine straw, and other debris gather on your lawn can trap water, which can lead to disease, mildew, and fungus. If you’ve been a little lax, get it cleaned up now. Leaves can be bagged and discarded, often with your regular trash, or turned into an inexpensive, efficient mulch for your trees and shrubs.

Speaking of mulch, now is a great time to spread it around your existing plants. Mulch helps the soil retain moisture, protect roots from the weather, and give your landscaping a neater, more defined look. You’ll especially want to mulch if you’re planting anything new. Adding spring flowers now means you’ll be able to enjoy beautiful colors, lovely smells, and all the other benefits of flowers in your yard.

If all this seems like a lot, don’t panic! Call Mr. Tree and let us take care of your residential lawn care needs. Our professional staff offers free estimates and even 24-hour emergency service.

With so many maintenance tasks for homeowners to tend to, it’s easy for landscaping to fall by the wayside. Don’t let this happen to you! Landscaping is an important component of home upkeep. Check out some of the reasons why:

• Curb Appeal. You may not be interested in selling your home just yet, but there’s a good chance you will eventually, and good landscaping is crucial to getting a good price. The lawn is the first thing potential buyers will see, after all. You want their first impression to be a good one. It’s also great for your neighbors! Landscaping can increase home values anywhere from 5% to 20%.

• Disease Prevention. Grass, trees, shrubs, and flowers that are not properly tended can easily fall victim to mildew, mold, and disease. It’s easier to prevent disease than to treat it. Keeping your yard healthy means keeping an eye on it–pruning, watering, moving, and trimming appropriately.

• Environmental Benefits. Well-planned landscaping, including appropriate use of shade, will help you save money and energy on heating and cooling!

• Your Enjoyment! Forget about potential buyers for a minute. Don’t you and your family deserve to enjoy your home while you live in it? A beautiful, inviting yard will increase your enjoyment and give you more space for entertaining, spending time with your family, and just living your best life.

Don’t think you have to handle all this alone. Turn to the professional landscaping services offered by Mr. Tree in Gainesville, FL. Contact us for a free estimate and check out the residential lawn care services we offer to see what best fits your needs.

The winter is in full swing, and that means it’s time for a different kind of lawn care than in the warmer months. Here at Mr. Tree we get a lot of questions about what is and isn’t good for your lawn in the winter. Check out our Dos and Don’ts for winter lawn care!

Do:

• Mulch and compost to protect your plants’ roots, help lock in moisture, help retain nutrients, and keep your topsoil warm and safe from erosion. Appropriate mulching will also protect against freezing.
• Bring delicate plants indoors, and water them carefully. With the heater sucking out the humidity in the house, it can be easy for indoor plants to dry out. Remember to place plants near windows so they can still get plenty of sun and stay away from direct drafts from vents.
• Transplant trees! For most trees and shrubs, now is the time to move them. Check out our tips and more information here, and contact Mr. Tree for more information.

Don’t:

• Prune! Now is not the time to be cutting back on most plants. If you must, do it carefully.
• Overwater! You should only water when the soil feels dry, usually after about two weeks without rain. Make sure not to water within 24 hours if you know it’s going to freeze. Ice will damage your plants, so water around noon to make sure all the moisture absorbs before the temperatures drop.

And finally, the biggest DO: call Mr. tree! We offer residential lawn care services to help alleviate winter issues, and also offer free estimates!

You know that right now isn’t the time to prune, and you know it’s not a great time to plant, but did you know that there’s one lawn care task you always want to do in the cold? That’s right: winter is the time to transplant trees and shrubs!

The first hard freeze of the season is a sign to many plants to go dormant. Obviously, this isn’t true for evergreens–those will fare best if moved in the late summer–but it applies to most deciduous trees and shrubs. Dormancy is a lot like sleeping or hibernating. Transplanting trees usually requires the cutting of roots, and that can cause a lot of stress. Think about it like this: if you were going to have major surgery, wouldn’t you rather be asleep? Your trees will appreciate it too. Make sure you wait until after the first hard freeze and finish the process before trees and shrubs have started showing new growth in the spring.

Transplanting trees can be tricky, and not just because of timing. You also need to make sure you’ve selected the best new location, have moved enough of the root system, and are moving your tree safely and carefully. There are many pre- and post-transplant tasks that must be tended to, and the process can be very labor-intensive. If you think you’d like to transplant a tree or shrub that’s grown fairly large.

Next time you think you’d like to move something in your yard, call the experts at Mr. Tree! We’ll make sure your tree transplanting goes smoothly.

What’s the one thing you MUST NOT do to your trees in the fall? As leaves turn it may be tempting to hack at your trees like they’re zombies invading your yard, but trust Mr. Tree: don’t prune in the fall! Tell your family, friends, neighbors, and people you meet on the street: pruning in the fall is bad for your trees.

You may have heard this advice before, but do you know why it’s such good advice? It boils down to the fact that pruning encourages growth, which is the last thing trees need right now. As the weather cools and the days shorten, most woody plants begin to go dormant, just like a bear preparing for hibernation. A tree’s job in the fall is to prepare for the winter, not grow larger. Besides, pruning when it’s warm also causes sap to rise up in the tree. When the temperature drops below freezing at night, however, that sap can freeze, causing all kinds of damage.

The general rule is to prune trees in the very middle of winter, and only if they need it. Once all the leaves have fallen you’ll be able to get a clear look at your tree’s branches. Don’t be afraid to wait until spring to prune, either, but make sure you don’t do it on a wet day–that can encourage disease.

Lawn care isn’t always as easy or intuitive as you might want. Feeling overwhelmed? Don’t panic! Call the experts at Mr. Tree and Lawn Service for friendly, professional, effective lawn services in the Gainesville, FL area.

It’s an age-old question that has muddied the waters between neighbors and insurance companies alike: if your neighbor’s tree falls in your yard, do you have to pay? The simple answer is no, probably not. However, depending on what caused the tree to fall, it could still be your responsibility.

Large, mature trees are great additions to any yard. Large Live Oaks, Sycamores, and Pines that can soar to over 100 feet in the air add beauty and a much-needed shady oasis to protect you from the Florida sun. They can also be hazardous and cause rifts between neighbors when they fall. Here at Mr. Tree, we thought it would be a good idea to run through two common reasons a large tree will fall in your Gainesville lawn, and what you should do when it happens.

Natural Disasters

Hurricane Irma recently made this hypothetical situation a reality. But before you start fighting with your neighbors about who is responsible for the damages and cleanup of a fallen tree, check this out… If a hurricane or tornado dropped a tree, it doesn’t much matter if it was rooted in your yard or the neighbor’s. You are technically responsible for the damages and cleanup on your yard. You need to call your homeowners insurance and open a claim immediately. Do not try to take care of the carnage yourself!

Tree Removal Accident

If your neighbor decides to take matters into their own hands and chop down a tree in their yard without calling a professional arborist and tree service like us here at Mr. Tree, they are responsible for where that tree falls. It takes a team of trained professionals to properly take down hazardous trees. Not only will the pros know what they’re doing, they’ll also be fully insured and licensed to make sure that any damages will be covered by the company rather than a homeowner or neighbor.

For more information about cleaning up fallen trees or removing a hazardous tree from your yard, give us a call at (352) 448-3962. We’ll be happy to give you a free estimate and safely handle all of your tree service needs in Gainesville, Florida.