Seasonal cleanups.

Recurring maintenance keeps a property steady. Seasonal cleanups are what make the steady state possible. They're the two visits a year that do the most work per hour on a commercial site, and they're the two most commonly scoped badly.

Spring cutback

Spring cleanup is the reset. It's the visit that determines whether your beds look intentional or abandoned for the next six months.

What it includes:

• Cutting back ornamental and native grasses and perennials. This is the right time — late winter to early spring, before new growth breaks, which is exactly what CSU Extension recommends. Left standing through winter (as they should be), the old stems gave the property vertical interest through the gray months and, per CSU, provided overwintering sites for beneficial insects and birds. Now they come off, cleanly, above the crown, before the new growth pushes up through the dead material and makes the cut impossible to do without shredding this year's plant.
• Bed edging and cleanout. Winter debris out, edges recut, the line between turf and bed re-established. On a commercial property this one thing does more for curb appeal than anything else in the visit.
• Mulch and rock refresh. Organic mulch breaks down and thins; rock beds accumulate a layer of organic fines and windblown soil that becomes a weed seedbed. Both get topped or cleaned.
• Pre-emergent weed control where appropriate. Timed to go down before the soil warms enough for the weeds you're trying to stop. Miss the window and you're hand-pulling all summer.
• Turf cleanup and first mow. Dead material off, first cut at the right height.
• Irrigation startup. Charging the system slowly and walking every zone to find what the winter broke — this is scoped under Irrigation Management and it should happen in the same window.

Spring is also when we take a hard look at what died. Colorado winters — with their brutal freeze-thaw swings, dry winds, and February warm spells that trick plants into breaking dormancy right before a hard freeze — kill plant material every year. Better to identify it, price the replacement, and get it into the enhancement budget in March than to have you looking at a dead shrub in July.

Fall cleanup

Fall cleanup is not spring cleanup in reverse. It has a completely different job: get the property through winter without creating a problem.

What it includes:

• Leaf removal. Not aesthetic — structural. A wet leaf mat left on cool-season turf over a Front Range winter smothers it, holds moisture against the crown, and invites snow mold. You'll find the damage in April as dead patches, and you'll pay to reseed them.
• Drains, inlets, and gutters clear. This is the big one and it's the one most crews skip. A storm inlet packed with leaves in November is a flooded parking lot in the first spring melt, or an ice sheet in the first freeze-thaw cycle. That's a liability problem, not a landscape problem.
• Beds cut back selectively — not indiscriminately. Here's where we differ from most crews. We do not cut everything to the ground in fall. Native grasses and many perennials stay standing through winter, on purpose. Diseased material and anything that will flop into a walkway comes out. The rest stays. A property that gets scalped to bare dirt in October has nothing to look at until May.
• Annuals pulled, containers cleared. Frozen annuals in a planter box at the front entry are a bad look from November to April.
• Turf's last cut at the right height going into dormancy.
• Irrigation blowout. Before the first hard freeze. Non-negotiable — see Irrigation Management.

Storm debris

The Front Range gets wet, heavy spring snows that load out fully-leafed trees and break limbs, and it gets summer hail and wind that strip beds and litter lots. Storm response isn't a scheduled visit — it's a call.

We handle debris clearing, hazard limb removal from drive lanes and walks, and lot cleanup after an event. Large-scale tree work — hangers, structural damage, removals — goes to Frontier Tree Care, our sibling brand. Same family, right equipment, right certifications.

What it costs you when it's done badly

Skip the fall drain clear and you get a flooded lot or an ice sheet, and an incident report.

Leave the leaf mat on the turf and you're buying reseed in the spring.

Skip the spring cutback and the new growth comes up through last year's dead material — now you can't cut it back without destroying this year's plant, so the bed carries a layer of gray dead stems all season and looks unmaintained through the exact months anyone is looking at it.

Cut everything to the ground in fall and your property has zero winter interest, your natives lose their crown protection, and — if there's a xeric bed on site — you've thrown away the entire reason someone installed it.

Time it right and these two visits carry the year.