Only two homes, owned by brothers, sit on the course. This home is visible from the driving range and passing golf carts.

The backyard had an existing elevation of 30 feet with a lake at the bottom. Rolsky turned the drop into multiple waterfalls fed  by the lake, with a hot tub at the foot of the cascade. The water seems to tumble into and around the spa, like a pool in a rain forest. The hot tub has a pair of its own petite waterfalls, one that spills into the tub and another that flows into the main cascade.
The fast-moving water won’t freeze, so the feature can run 24 hours a day, every day of the year. The foundation is an eight inch-thick layer of gunnite, which is stronger than a lining and shouldn’t be at risk for a puncture.

Pro Care used about 70 tons of sandstone—lighter than granite and limestone—but hauled even more to the job site. Over two-and-a-half months, the crew arranged boulders for a natural appearance. With 37 years of experience, Rolsky says he doesn’t need so much as a sketch for this process. “We’re artisans with the stone,” he says.

I’m not talking about slapping some paint on the walls and pulling up or installing carpeting. The changes I’m referring to are major – walls taken down, kitchens dismantled, bathrooms ripped out. If the homeowners move in the spring or

summer, their zest often shows up outside, too, in a new deck, hardscaping and landscaping.

But experts in the remodeling and landscaping industries will tell you that it’s best to live in the home with the existing landscape for at least 4 seasons (if you can stand it) to truly understand what you want, what works best and, in the case of plants in the yard, what will thrive.

By spending a year with your yard, you’ll gain an intimate knowledge of its beauty and its flaws, its true potential and your willingness to alter it. After waiting a long 12 months, you may want to jump in with both feet and do something big the following spring.

Lowell Rolsky, of Pro Care Horticultural Services in Carmel, Ind., cautions against trying to do everything at once. “In most cases, we believe landscapes are best when implemented in stages. Prioritizing and compromising to meet the aesthetic and financial need at any given time allows for everything.” He brings up another point. Our lives aren’t static and things can happen to make us change course. By not trying to manage a huge landscape revision all at once, Lowell believes, “This creates opportunities to live with the landscape, and adjust based on current conditions as things change around you or lifestyles change.”

To truly understand the yard surrounding your new home, you need to walk around in it. Each season brings its own surprises and experiences. Log them in a gardening journal that includes notes like:

• Path of the sun
• Amount and type of available light for plants during the growing season
• Direction and force with which rain drains, soggy areas, etc.

You can do specific things during each season, too. For instance:

Summer:

Summer can be the true test of a landscape. If your summers are hot and dry, you’ll also get an idea of how much water you’ll have to use to keep your landscape looking healthy. If you have large swathes of lawn, or a preponderance of non-native plants to attend to, you may be spending a small fortune on watering. Summer is a great time to investigate the possibilities of native plantings and the water savings they might provide. Summer also gives you the opportunity to identify the cooler parts of your yard. These areas can be planted or used for recreation or gathering spaces.

Fall:

As the days become cooler, you’ll watch your yard begin its colorful transition back to winter. Make note of what does and doesn’t shed its leaves and what those leaves look like. If you like a colorful fall yard and you don’t have one currently, you’ll get a sense of what plants and trees to focus on when you begin the planting process. Aside from raking leaves, you may want to leave plants such as grasses and vines to dry in the cool air, giving your winter garden some visual interest and places for wildlife to play and hide.

Winter:

Winter is when your yard is at rest. The bushiness of spring and the colorful leaves of fall have given way to the hush of the sleeping season. This is the optimum time to observe your landscape as a whole, spotting gaps that could be filled, and making note of areas that may need to be repurposed. The winter landscape is the perfect one on which to imagine the plants you may see in the plant and seed catalogs that invariably arrive in late January and early February.

During winter you can observe the form the bushes and trees have, too, helping you determine if some trimming isn’t necessary before the spring sap rises. (Do make sure you understand what types of bushes you have before trimming them in the spring. Some need trimming in the fall or only after spring blooming.) Winter is also a great time to inspect the hardscaping to see if it needs replacing or complete removal.

Spring:

The first spring in your new yard may bring surprises – both welcome and unwelcome. What could be more fun that seeing what will grow in your new space? The trick may be knowing what’s a weed and what isn’t. If the prior homeowner wasn’t much of a gardener, you may have a lot of clearing to do, just to stay ahead of the weeds. However, if you’re lucky like I was, the homeowner reveled in planting the yard and making sure the plant labels were intact. Fewer surprises, but few weeds, too.

By May, your plants and bushes will be grown out enough that you’ll have somewhat of a handle on how they’ll perform for the remainder of the growing season. Now that you have live things to look at, you can again assess if things make sense or not in their placement. You can also remove things that didn’t over-winter and decide if you want to spend the money now to replace them or wait until your bigger landscape project is underway. (Remember, you’re still really the observer, not the planter.)

The end result of your year of patience? A yard that will begin to truly reflect you, your family and your lifestyle based on a sound understanding of your yard’s eco-system. Planning and budgeting the stages of your landscape plan will also give you time to research ideas, save money for the project and anticipate the next great phase of your landscaping dream.

As a result, Canada geese — which are naturally aggressive, especially when tending eggs or minding chicks — create a tremendous amount of disturbances to the properties owned by many of our commercial clients. Geese also foul surrounding areas and walkways with their feces, and create quite a feather mess during molting season. This has become quite a concern for many of our commercial customers, and it’s a problem they’d rather not have to worry about.

Laws protect Canada geese from physical harm. So clients have relied on chemicals to combat the geese, but the results have been inconsistent. Others have used deterrents like sound cannons or faux predators, but the benefits are short lived. In fact, I’ve seen people use floating alligators, but within a week the geese were back and standing on the reptilian mannequins.

Three years ago we began offering commercial clients a service through our landscape business that we call Goose Proof K-9 Goose Control. We were turned on to the idea after hearings about the success golf course superintendents have had using dogs to control geese.

Border collies, which traditionally herd sheep, harass the geese to the point where they no longer want to stay or come back to a property. To the geese, avoiding the dogs becomes more trouble than its worth.

On average, Border collies can cost between $500 and a few thousand dollars depending on how much an owner is  willing to spend. We contacted a breeder who lined us up with three dogs best suited for our purposes and who taught us how to train and maintain the dogs. We also obtained a license permitting us to destroy geese nests and eggs.

A sales person  handles the dogs and visits clients on a regular basis to address their geese problems. He simply arrives on site and lets the dogs go to work. They know what to do. One problem is on properties with large ponds, the geese swim to the center and out of the dogs’ effective reach. So to troubleshoot this problem we use radio-control boats to drive the geese to the shore and to the waiting dogs.

We charge our commercial clients between $45 and $55 per hour for the service and we generated about $100,000 in revenue from it last year. It’s a nice service because it provide us an added opportunity to check property for other service deficiencies, as well as provide our clients another service making us a one-stop-shop full-service firm. And to date, using Border collies is the only method that addresses Canada geese on a consistent and realistic basis. LL

Lowell Rolsky is the owner of Pro Care Horticulture Services in Carmel, Ind. He can be reached at 317/872-4800 or sales@procarelandscapers.com.