Fall is upon us once again, and it’s time to schedule your Fall Lawn Renovation. The hot and humid summer has once again affected our lawns. We are offering a 5 step process to get those yards up and growing! The first step is Verti-cut which is simply cutting small lines into your yard, allowing the seed to come into direct contact with the soil. This will insure correct seed germination. Then we will plug small holes all throughout your lawn. This will allow oxygen and nutrient’s to reach the roots of the turf, this step is aeration. Then they apply the seed to your lawn, we use Turf Type Fescue Seed.  Fescue is the best seed for the Kansas City area, which is more drought and weed tolerant than Bluegrass. We will then Verti-cut a second time to insure the seed to soil contact, this is important for growing. The final step is over-seed, we apply a starter fertilizer to the turf this supports and encourages the seed to germinate and develop deep and successful root development. After the process is complete you will need to do a few things to assist your yard. Keep traffic on your lawn to a minimum. Light, frequent watering until the seed starts to germinate. Don’t spray herbicide that can injure your new young grass, until after 5-6 mows.  Please call the office to schedule your fall lawn renovation!   All lawn renovation work must be completed in the next several weeks, so call now to schedule…

When I hear the phrase “how about those chiefs” this season, I can’t help but let out a bit of a sarcastic laugh and at the same time get a little bit angry. Sunday’s game against the Vikings ended with a win, but the Chiefs didn’t start stepping up their game until the 2nd half! Tony Gonzalez commented on the difference in the 2nd half saying, “we just weren’t hooking up. It’s my fault, [along with] the quarterback, the offensive line and the receivers. We’re all accountable to each other. Because it didn’t take too much, it wasn’t like a big adjustment going into the second half. They’re the same plays we’ve been practicing all week. We were just able to execute in the second half.”

I’m sure there are quite a few Chief’s fans who are wondering the same things as me. What’s up with Larry Johnson? He is now getting paid what he says “he’s worth”, but where did his game go? In the 3 games that the Chiefs have played this season, Johnson has a mere 46.7 rushing ypg. Another question so many fans have is the poor performance of our offensive line. We have had such a hard time getting the ball down the field and went three-and-out in the first quarter against the Vikings.
The Chiefs head to San Diego this Sunday to play the Chargers knowing that the Chargers have won the last 17 of their 22 home games since 1996. Larry Johnson will be matched up against NFL’s 2006 Most Valuable Player RB LaDainian Tomlinson. Chief’s fans can only hope that they will step up their game and leave San Diego with another win under their belt.

Four years ago, while attending a Design/Build conference in New York City, a group of company owners from around the country visited Jacobsen Landscape Design and Construction. I was amazed at what my friends Glen and Melissa Jacobsen had built at their office - a place for their clients to literally experience the project they were considering purchasing from Jacobsen.

Over the years, I have dreamed about delivering such a place to our clients in Kansas City.

We are proud to introduce you to The Highland Outdoor Client Center!

This year, as our team evaluated what our clients asked for most often, we decided to create the Client Center. This one-of-a-kind landscape showroom allows our current and potential clients to experience the project we have designed, in an environment that looks and feels like their own living room.

We have an indoor and outdoor display area, with samples of most of the hardscape materials we use in our jobs, complemented with landscape and other items often found in our jobs. No longer will our clients need to visit vendors or have samples dropped off. We have all of them at our office, to see the texture, color, shape, size and integrity of our products.

Also, we have an ongoing slide show of hundreds of our project photos on flat screen televisions in our two main spaces devoted to the Client Center. Through lots of research and client feedback, we are proud to introduce each and every client to our office - where making decisions about project scope is fast-tracked, making it incredibly easy to business with our company.

One of the advantages of being involved in the leadership of PLANET is that I travel to visit landscape companies across the country, as well as locally, and I’m confident this will forever change the client experience. If you’d like to stop by, please make an appointment through our office via email or phone.

We are still waiting on a few more items to finish our display, but feedback from clients thus far has been overwhelming. Check out photos of the Client Center on our Project Portfolio page, or direct linked here.

We have recently uploaded more photos of a project in Lenexa. Check them out on our Project Portfolio page or link to the new gallery here.

A couple of weeks ago one of our hardscape crews completed the remodel of the front of the office. The purpose of this was to give our future customers of Highland Outdoor an ideas of the different types of materials that we most commonly use and the unique ways that we can install them. As well as enhance our design center to provide an area to welcome our future clients as well as add to the front of our building. We are also incorporating a water feature in the front by the circular patio area, as well landscape lighting to illuminate the accent areas for security as well as enjoying the landscape after dusk.