Property Maintenance

All our contracts are weekly during the months of May through end of August.

We offer one-year contracts and have 3 different schedule plans to suit your needs. Our Standard service is 34 visits during the year and is our most popular option. We will service your home weekly May through the end of August, and bi-monthly September through April. Our next level is our Signature Service with 42 scheduled visits. In this plan we extend our weekly visits up to the Christmas Holidays. It is good for those that want a weekly visit through the Fall leaf season and everything looking neat for the holiday season. Our third plan is weekly visits throughout the year.

Our maintenance contracts include turf maintenance, edging, blowing down hardscapes, routine pruning according to a seasonal calendar, bed weed control, bed leaf removal and our lawn care program. For those who want it, we have a tree and shrub program and irrigation start-up / shut-down service as an option.

Most companies will have competitive pricing for lawn care and may even use the same products. The advantage with using our service with your maintenance is to avoid scheduling conflicts (lawn care and maintenance showing up on the same day). Our lawn care supervisors can see our maintenance schedule and plan accordingly. The other reason is the simplicity of having one phone number to call for both services.

We will remove smaller lateral growing limbs (1/2” or smaller) to maintain a clean looking trunk up to 6’ depending on the variety. We will also remove any cross branching, sucker growth and diseased/winter damage that can be safely accessible by an 8’ ladder. We do not recommend removing top growth (fingering) or hard cut backs that will destroy their natural form. Hard cut back or aggressive pruning, if requested, may require additional charges for the additional labor and landfill fees.

For our maintenance contracts, along with our regular maintenance service we offer as an option our irrigation start up and shut down services, and our tree & shrub program.

Other services that are available are landscape consults at an hourly rate, landscape design/installation, landscape lighting, patio/fireplace installations and home pest control services.

There are several ways you can pay your bill with Acre Group.

We accept most major credit cards, checks, ACH, and cash. Please be aware we do charge a 2.6% surcharge for all cards. You can pay through the employee portal, mail, or call over the phone. You can also set up automatic payments through our customer portal.

We take most major credit cards. Visa, American Express, and Discover. We also accept (ACH) through your bank account, and cash.

Please be aware that we do charge a 2.6% surcharge for all cards.

New irrigation installations as well as additions, major changes to current systems are handled through our Install Division. We have the ability to replace controllers, replacing / adjusting heads and minor repairs on an hourly rate. For our residential maintenance customers, as an option on their maintenance contract, seasonal Start-up and Shut-down of their irrigation systems. What that provides is a trained technician to turn off your irrigation at the irrigation meter or main irrigation supply valve if available for the winter. At spring time, we will return to turn on and test the system running through all the zones. We make minor head adjustments as part of the service. Any repairs or parts replacements can be scheduled and completed at an hourly rate plus materials at a reduced price.

All our residential maintenance contracts are year-round contracts. We do this for a couple reasons. First, while we do bring in additional personnel during the growing season, we find continuity and customer satisfaction greater when we maintain our crew leaders and core key personnel full time and on the same property year-round. The other reason, horticulturally speaking the summer months are mostly maintenance of turf areas, edging beds, blowing down hardscapes and pruning evergreen shrubs. It is the months of September through April where most of the horticultural activities makes the biggest impact. In the late fall, we keep the leaves off the turf areas, begin our fall pruning and continue our routine maintenance as needed. During the winter, we clean remaining leaves in beds, start our winter pruning program, clean up natural areas, and do structural pruning as needed. Late Winter / early Spring we start “scalping” the turf, establishing edges and begin our late winter / early spring pruning. Our goal is to get all this completed prior to the beginning of the maintenance season.

We do not offer twice monthly plans. Depending on type of grass, the environmental conditions, shade issues, and home owner tolerances, weekly mowing of some houses may not be warranted. But if your lawn gets plenty of sun, reasonably watered and growing, the goal is to avoid cutting off too much of the leaf blade at one time, especially during the heat of the summer. Bermuda grass and lawns getting regular fertilizations are especially stressed during this time if allowed to grow too tall between mowing. To encourage healthy growth and proper turf density we follow the 1/3rd rule for our turf grass maintenance. Our goal is to mow no more than 1/3rd of the grass blade during each visit. We find that weekly mowing meets this criteria.

Our crews work a 4-day work week schedule Monday through Thursday. In the event of bad weather or holiday we shift our week schedule one day and use Fridays as our make-up day. Occasionally we may need to reschedule the following week. Those in our Standard and Premier Programs, there are two extra services built into our schedule should a service be missed.

Yes, we do! We provide an opportunity to sign up for the service every spring. We end our aeration services by mid-June. We charge by the square foot. However, our aeration services are limited to reasonably flat ground, no more than 15° slope, and turf areas can be easily accessed from the street.

Our tree and shrub program has 4 applications purposefully scheduled through the year. For our first round we use a quality slow-release spring fertilizer to enhance plant health, performance, and disease resistance. Then we have an early and late summer application of insecticide/miticide/fungicide applications that provides foliar insect and disease control. Our final application is a mid-winter application of horticultural oil that is effective on over-wintering insects such as scale, spider mite eggs and lace bugs. We will treat trees up to 20’. Pests and diseases controlled by this program are limited to insects and diseases that cause foliar damage only.