A great lawn care company can be your partner in helping to ensure your lawn looks and performs its best. But if you’ve never gone through the process to hire a lawn service before, you might have no idea where to begin (or what to look for in a company).
There are a lot of lawn care companies in our area and you might be wondering what really separates one from another? Are they really that different? And what should you know about lawn care before trying to hire the right company for the job?
We commend you for wanting to make an educated choice and for having a better understanding of the process before you get started. That’s why we’re talking about things you should know before hiring a lawn service.
At the end of the day, we want you to feel confident that you’re choosing wisely and will be happy as a result.
We know there is a misconception that all lawn care companies are offering basically the exact same thing. But this isn’t the case. It’s true that most lawn care companies are going to offer core services like fertilization and weed control.
But even the way that these lawn services are broken out can really differ from one company to another.
Some lawn care companies offer their lawn services a la carte, so you need to go through and pick and choose what you want. This isn’t ideal.
While it might make it seem like you’re saving some money by leaving certain services out but if your lawn suffers as a result, it will only mean adding them in later (and then having ground to make up for lost time).
That’s why we believe it’s important to include all necessary lawn care services as part of a complete lawn care program.
At Master Lawn, we believe that lawn care services are best grouped into lawn care packages at tiered levels which still give homeowners some choice. Even at the basic level (Silver), we’re still including all of the services needed for the most common issues that a lawn faces annually.
At a bare minimum, you want to make sure your lawn care program has professional lawn fertilization, customized weed control, and lime and calcium treatments.
You’ll also want to have access to turf disease treatments and lawn aeration.
Another factor that will impact your lawn care results (and that you should consider before hiring a lawn care company) is the products used by the company.
This is another one of those misconceptions that we sometimes hear. It’s easy to assume that all lawn care companies are using the same professional-grade products— but this isn’t the case at all.
In fact, this is an area where some companies might skimp to try and make more money. Some companies don’t invest in higher quality products but still charge the client as though they do. Unfortunately, that’s going to have a direct impact on the results.
This also brings up the argument for why we don’t recommend DIY lawn care.
You might have wondered: Is it worth paying for a lawn service? After all, if you can go out and buy all those lawn care products yourself, why would you pay someone to do it for you?
But the products you can purchase in a store simply aren’t going to compare to products that are professional-grade and purchased by a licensed lawn care company. As a homeowner, you simply can’t get the same commercial-grade, high-quality products that a professional will have access to.
Another difference when you consider Is it worth paying for a lawn service is the fact that with a professional, you get access to their expertise.
The trouble is, so often these lawn problems are hard to identify because their symptoms all resemble one another. It really does take a trained eye to know what’s going on and what products to apply to remedy the problem.
Even something as seemingly simple as weed control is a lot more complex than most people realize. There’s a misconception that with weed control, you can take a blanket approach with one product that will hit all weeds. But that’s not the case at all. A truly effective weed control program will use varied products, based upon exactly what weeds your lawn is struggling with.
As you look at the various lawn care companies out there, you’ll likely see different price points and various “offers.” It’s important to recognize that during this time, many lawn care companies are going to use marketing tactics to get you in the door.
It’s also not uncommon for lawn care companies to offer vague pricing on their package making it unclear what you’ll actually wind up paying for a year’s worth of service.
Sometimes lawn care companies might undersell you on what your lawn needs but then try to sell a lot of add-on services later. While there’s nothing wrong with add-on services that you might genuinely need (like lawn aeration), you just want to be wary if a lawn care program seems to be missing a lot of services. That might have only been a tactic used to gain your business.
This is the same reason why we think grouping key services into lawn care programs makes a lot more sense than selling everything a la carte. It shouldn’t be on the homeowner to figure out everything their lawn needs.
Hopefully this article has given you some things to look out for and avoid as you start the process of hiring a lawn care company.
Avoiding gimmicky traps and getting a strong sense of who you’re hiring and what they offer boils down to performing some solid research.
One way to do this is to spend time on lawn care companies’ websites and find out more what they’re all about.
You can also look at a company’s lawn care reviews. Pay attention to the number of stars that they receive. The most popular online review site right now is Google Reviews, and they, like others, use a 5-star rating system.
You want to find lawn care companies in Memphis, TN that have both a high number of stars (4.5 or higher for the cream of the crop) as well as a large quantity of reviewers. The combination of both is important as the more reviewers a company has, the more difficult it becomes to maintain a higher rating.
Also look at the comments offered by reviewers to get a sense of what their lawn care results and customer experience has been like. It’s a very authentic validation of how well a company is performing.
We understand that choosing a lawn care service can feel like a big task. There are a lot of companies to choose from and you may feel like you have a lot of research to do. But we commend you for putting this time in so that you can feel confident in making a wise choice.
At the end of the day, all of these efforts will pay off by helping you narrow down your choices and feel good about your final decision.
At Master Lawn, we value the opportunity to play a role in guiding you toward making an educated choice. Whether you choose Master Lawn or not, we believe it makes our industry better when consumers are holding it to the highest standard.
Ready to have a lawn that you love at your Tennessee or Northern Mississippi home? Talk to a lawn care expert, choose from 3 program options, and become the master of your lawn.
