Landscape management is the most challenging field in ornamental horticulture. The true landscape manager must be knowledgable about landscape design,...
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plant materials and turfgrasses, soils, plant nutrition, culture and maintenance, the identification and control of pests, chemical use and misuse, and the ability to use and repair all types of landscape equipment. Additionally, every day the landscape manager faces challenges directing and supervising employees, managing a budget and/or keeping the business afloat, and dealing with owners, managers, sales representatives, customers, and clients. The landscape professional must also wade through the endless mire of taxes, regulations, and government mandates.
Books previously available provided the nuts and bolts of maintaining plants or turf. None, however, treated landscape management as a business.
Landscape architects must produce specifications and contracts. They must know something about maintaining plants before producing requirements for others to follow. Landscape managers must efficiently provide the highest quality care for the plants and everything else on and in the landscape. They must also budget and price work for a profit, if they are to remain employed or in business. Too often texts and references deal only with discrete plant-oriented landscape units: turfgrass; trees; shrubs; or flowers. Landscape managers and landscape designers must deal with developing and maintaining the landscape as the sum of all its parts. All the aspects of maintaining a landscape are interrelated.
The uniqueness of this text is that it provides a survey of business, personnel, and profit-oriented topics, as well as considering techniques and technology for properly managing landscape plants. The information, techniques, and thoughts are the products of the author's long and successful career in landscape horticulture. This book will be valuable and thought-provoking to students and landscape professionals alike.
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