For much of the country, it’s been a wet and windy landscaping season so far, and many contractors have had difficulty sticking to their schedules. Without a doubt, wet weather can seriously impede landscape installation and maintenance schedules, but what happens when mother nature really shows what she’s made of?
When hurricane Claudette made landfall on July 16, her 85 mph winds downed tree limbs, and tore apart roofs. That’s not to mention the flood damaged caused in many low-lying areas along the Texas coast and an all-around muddy mess in Houston, Galveston, Port Lavaca, Corpus Christi and numerous other coastal towns.
“Storms like this really put our crews behind on maintenance,” comments Sylvia Carpenter, marketing representative, Houston Landscape Unlimited, Sugarland, Texas. “At the same time though, it also increases the volume of additional work like fixing storm-damaged properties and picking up debris. In the residential arena we also pick up new clients and sometimes there are so many, we have to refer them out.”
Carpenter reports that Sugarland had a good deal of high water that would take about a day or two to recede before clean-up work could begin. However, Houston Landscapes Unlimited’s crews were able to do some advance preparation since this time of year is Houston’s rainy season anyway.
“They went around and made sure all the automatic irrigation systems were turned off and made sure they were up to par so that if it rained they wouldn’t come on,” she comments. “We had enough time to get ready, so now it’s just a matter of cleaning up the aftermath.”
In another water-logged area 1200 miles away, hundreds of homes and businesses were damaged by severe flooding in late June.
“The flooding in this area really put our maintenance division behind, as well, and we have a lot of our crew members out on clean-up jobs right now,” explains Greg Maxwell, president, Maxwell Tree Expert Co., Fort Wayne, Ind. “The weather in our area comes with both positive and negative effects. We can’t get any work done when a lot of our service area is flooded, but when it comes time for clean up after a flood like this or after a tornado moves through, we can pick up a good deal of extra work.”
Thankfully, neither Maxwell Tree Expert Co., nor Houston Landscapes Unlimited experienced any severe damage to their facilities from the severe weather in their areas. Both companies are keeping busy with storm clean-up, but for information on other ways to use rainy downtime to the company’s advantage, read “Cutting Out” in the July issue of Lawn & Landscape.
The author is Assistant Editor of Lawn & Landscape and can be reached at lspiers@lawnandlandscape.com.