Of all the things you can do for your home—fresh paint, updated cabinetry—there is nothing more important than curb appeal. And the key to curb appeal is a healthy, verdant lawn of grass and eye-catching landscaping. If you don’t have that under control, you can kiss that curb appeal goodbye.
The problem is that while you do everything in your power to create a welcoming front yard, you are fighting an uphill battle against nature. Too much rain or too little rain, and the whole thing falls apart. The wrong pest decides to make its home in your lawn, and suddenly you’re battling bare patches. And then, of course, there are the microscopic seeds carried on the wind, depositing weeds all over your masterpiece of a lawn.
“With the warm weather we have and the amount of rainfall we see, it contributes tremendously to weed growth,” said Marc “Lawn Doctor” Deloach. “Weeds are probably the number one reason we get calls.”
They are not, however, the only reason. Thousands of homeowners from Hilton Head Island to Savannah trust Deloach’s expertise to keep their lawns healthy and to keep shrubbery and trees healthy and vigorous. Deloach has been a master gardener since 1997.
It’s a customer base that has grown steadily since Deloach started in the business 30 years ago, purchasing the Lawn Doctor franchise in Savannah and then expanding his territory across the state line into South Carolina. “It was a long, slow process,” he said. “We grow a little bit every year.”
Fortunately, he knows a thing or two about keeping things growing. It’s not just lawns. Deloach credits the steady expansion of his business from a single truck working out of his dad’s garage to a state-spanning empire with three simple words: Good customer service.
That means going above and beyond, like educating freshly transplanted Southerners unaccustomed to the climate of their adopted home. “We have warm-season grasses here, and up North they have cool-season grasses. So, you can’t really seed. It’s not an option,” Deloach said. “Up North, people will throw down some fescue in the fall. Down here, most people will lay down sod.”
Right now, Deloach recommends homeowners start their core aeration sometime in April after the grass greens up. “It really helps get oxygen down to the roots—relieves compaction and aids in water absorption,” he said.
But hold off on fertilizing. “A lot of people start fertilizing now, which is too early. You have to wait for the temperature of the soil to get up there,” Deloach said. “A lot of people who get a few warm days think it’s time to fertilize.”
These are just a few tips based on the decades of expertise Deloach brings to thousands of lawns across the Lowcountry. So, if your curb appeal needs a checkup, the doctor is in. in.
For more information, call (912) 966-1123 or visit lawndoctor.com.
