This site incorporates many landscape features—blending formal expanses of turf, sitting areas and walkways with complimentary punctuations of bountiful perennials, and formal hedges—all of which work in concert to create an inviting site that is ideal for employees, students and guests to enjoy.

The turf on this site must be immaculate despite challenges in grade. Several areas of the property, like these tiers, require the use of smaller push mowers.

The property’s turf and plant material are kept lush and green by careful management of the irrigation system. Crews work closely with site personnel to identify irrigation leaks or pipe obstructions that impede water flow and perform timely repairs to ensure that the plant material and turf remains vibrant.

The site’s superintendent has a horticulture background and has a good understanding of property’s care. We conduct site walk-throughs twice a month to discuss challenges and look for areas of improvement as the property evolves.

Crews spend about 50% of their time on site hand-pruning and dead-heading plants to keep them healthy, orderly, and visually appealing. Struggling plant material is replaced immediately using plant material matching the campus’ palette that the contractor keeps on hand at their facility.

In advance of high-profile events, we perform additional prep work such as extra pruning and shearing, mowing, and even trash pickup so that the site looks it’s best.

Maintenance of the site’s 200 trees requires routine inspections for disease and insects, and on more mature trees, pruning of lower limbs.

With linear precision essential throughout the property, the maintenance of these Chinese fringe flower shrubs requires use of string lines, hand pruning and sheering to create a consistent height and shape. There are 1200 shrubs on the site we maintain.

This quad area is one of two campus areas containing Bermuda sod. Even with preventive care, it’s heavy use for events creates damage. It’s been necessary for us to remove nearly all the turf and reinstall it on two occasions. The newly installed sod can be seen in this picture.

Plants from the Sarah P. Duke Gardens were incorporated into the landscape’s design creating continuity and preserving the site’s strong history. Unique perennial varieties like yarrow, catmint, red yucca and euphorbia add a pop of color to the largely verdant landscape palate.

The yarrow seen in the foreground requires continuous deadheading to encourage continuous blooming throughout the growing season. In early spring and again mid-summer, we prune to encourage blooming and keep their look tidy.

The multi-tiered nature of the site’s beds requires crews to be very cautious as they maneuver around performing pruning and deadheading. With over 30,000 perennials on site, early spring cutbacks take our team about one week to complete.

Crews perform regular weed control using both post and pre-emergent treatments, selective herbicides and by hand-pulling any large weeds.

To maintain the health of the site’s predominantly cool season fescue turf, which is a high priority for the client, turf applications are performed five times per year with aeration and overseeding in the fall and spring to encourage a deep-root system and introduce improved turf varieties.

Weekly maintenance is performed on a seven-day schedule, requiring approximately 30 hours per visit. Site maintenance is performed between 7-11 a.m. to minimize disturbance of students and visitors who use this outside eating area.

In the spring, we spend 200+ hours spreading 140+ yards of mulch. With no ability to maneuver trucks in close, we have to use tarps, trash cans and innovative carrying racks attached to mowers to maximize efficiency and minimize the chance team members will suffer back strain.

Providing a consistently high standard of maintenance in this expansive landscape is challenging. But with strong communication between all parties and an eye to detail, the university is accomplishing its goal of creating a world class landscape for its students, university employees and campus visitors.