The way a regular home residential person, well, if you have a person owning a home or living in a home, should hire a lawn care company is first, recognize exactly what they’re looking for.

If you’re looking for somebody to simply mow your grass, or if you’re looking for somebody to simply take care of an individual service, just know exactly what you want first. When you know what you want, you just start your hunt. The hunt’s simple, you just gotta know exactly where to look. In order to find those out, you want to look in certain places. I would suggest places that have qualified landscapers, like Landscape Ontario. They actually have you do a test and provide three references before you even get qualified to be part of their company.

They also have you provide photographs of your work in order for them to even accept you as a member, and you have to be a member at least for about a few years or so before you’re even an active member where you can use their logo. Those companies that you see with Landscape Ontario logos, you know that they’ve been in business for some time. Probably start there, and when you do find those companies, you’re still not in perfect water. They’ve just been in business for some time.

The best thing you want to do after that is, after you’ve found qualified companies, you want to call them. You want to call them, I would suggest, call them after 8:00. See if they answer the phone, and if they don’t answer the phone, don’t use them. Send them an e-mail, see if they respond before the day ends. If they don’t respond, probably don’t use that company, the same thing is going to happen to you, and you’re actually needing to get a hold of them, or if you actually need something completed, that’s going to continue, it’s not going to change.

The things you should look out for are when a person is… or maybe call the company again, and if you do get a hold of the staff, request an estimate, see how fast they respond to your need, how long you’re waiting to get things done. If they mention, “I can get this done to you in a month, or three weeks from now,” probably go with a different provider. That is the stick-to system to avoid you going through those hassles of waiting on getting services completed through extended amounts of time.

You’d want to look for a company that has a good ranking online. You want to check things like their reviews in Google, how they’re rated, what people are saying about them. I would also suggest checking more online things, such as their YouTube videos. You want to check what they’re doing in their videos. You want to check their testimonials, their online testimonials. You want to call their references. If they have available references that they’re willing to give you to call, call the references.

You almost won’t even need to go through all of those factors once you figure out that they’re willing to give you all of that. You probably have a good company. Finally, you want a good company that can guarantee you and will keep you safe, and you want one that has a solid guarantee for you. You want a company that has a guarantee that backs you, that doesn’t leave you with any out-of-pocket risk. You want a company that is going to give you no risk at all using them.

If you hire the company and they don’t provide you the work you like, and the work isn’t good, and you’re unhappy, and you’re in a contract, are you going to have to continue on with that contract for the full season, or can you cancel? Will they let you cancel? Are you in a binding agreement? You want to find a company that doesn’t leave you feeling like you’re in a binding agreement. You want to work with a company that makes you feel you’re safe.

If a mistake happens, they’ll fix it. And just ensuring they’re watching your back. One you have that, all of that, and ultimately at the end you want to follow that gut feeling. That gut feeling, you’ll notice after you research all of those things, you will know who to choose.

I think the main thing about Top Notch that makes us better is we always answer the phone and we always respond to your e-mails. We always respond to your requests, always. You’re not going to bump into voice mails, you’re not going to call the guy that’s sitting in his truck that’s saying, “Hang on one second, let me pull over.” You’re going to bump into somebody on the phone who’s going to handle your concern right away.

You’re going to come home and you’re going to look at your place and you’re going to feel like you’re never going to have to pick anything up, that everything looks spotless, you’re going to feel good about coming home, you’ll never pick up behind us. When you contact us or when you speak to one of our technicians in the field, you’re going to ask him a question and he’s going to know the answer. He’s not going to say, “Umm, I don’t know.”

You’re going to ask him the name of a plant, he’s going to know the name of the plant. You’re going to ask him, “What’s wrong with my tree?” He’s going to tell you there. You’re going to have peace of mind knowing that you’re dealing with a guy who’s a professional that studied this stuff. You’re going to know the guy’s coming on Friday and you have a barbecue on Saturday, and you’re going to feel that assurance that your grass is going to be cut on that Friday because we told you that.

We’re going to show up on that Friday because we told you we are and we do that because we only have a certain amount of crews that do a specific service. We only give them a certain amount of jobs to ensure that they’re on time. No one’s doing this stuff. A lot of difference with us, is that the clients can go online, simply go online, or their mobile device, be it anywhere they are, if they’re at work, or if they’re not at work, and they can view their account details right online.

They can receive their invoices to know exactly when they got billed and exactly what they got billed for through their e-mail so they can check it whenever they want. Also, at any time, any photograph of any service that took place on their property, (inaudible 0:46:56) before and after of any service that took place on their property at any time they decide. If they decide they want the full season, they want a full season of photographs of every single visit that took place, because they’re away on vacation and not sure who showed up each and every time, we can provide every single visit.

The difference with us here in Toronto is I notice a lot of people don’t do this, we constantly change our mowing directions, just for the health of the grass. Lots of companies in Toronto carry one million dollar liability insurance. Because they do, we carry $2 million, just to make sure that everything is safe, that there is no risk, no worries when working with us.

We, at the beginning of the season, we will analyze your soil and we will analyze the property, and we ensure that at the end of the season, when we have that final photograph, that we actually improve your property before we started it, so your property constantly gets better-looking every year. We clean our equipment and we sharpen our blades every single day. We make sure the mowing job looks nice by doing that, and we clean them out. We actually power wash our mowers the moment they get back every single day to make sure there’s no turf to be spread.

When somebody calls us, if there’s a problem, that model that I still have since I started working years ago, we respond immediately to your concern. We use the best equipment that we can, so we try to use diesel equipment, we try to use stuff that doesn’t cost a lot to the environment. We try to work with equipment that’s less harmful to the environment. We provide additional services, a variety of additional services that are useful that people need.

When you’re at home and you’re unsure of calling somebody else to fix the sprinkler head, or if you don’t know if you need to call another company to look at your tree, you can actually ask the landscaper, and say, “You know what, I’ll ask my landscaper, he probably knows about my tree. I don’t need to look around or ask them for somebody else to come and look around.” You actually can talk to the guy who’s on your lawn.

With us, especially here, you’re noticing you’re dealing with uniformed staff. All of our guys are in uniforms. They’re friendly, and they know what they’re talking about, and if you have a concern, they’re easy to work with. You can just walk with them, talk with them, and voice your concern and they’ll handle it right there.

At the end of all of this, we donate their money to cancer research, and we have that risk we guarantee that we stand by. Even after all of that happening, that money that they paid us, a portion of that profit that would come to us is actually going to cancer research. We also have that risk-free guarantee, so there’s no risk for them at all. They’re just left with peace of mind and a beautiful property.

Our aeration service is a very important service. Aeration is just a very important service in lawn care practice overall. It is the most practiced service, I guess, next to fertilizing your lawn. Aeration is very popular for the fact that it works.

What an aeration does is, it is a mechanical machine, generally, that is driven across your lawn that pulls plugs out of your lawn and leaves holes in your lawn. These plugs that are pulled out will be pieces of your soil. These pieces of soil will sit on your grass like a compost for your lawn, which will actually give more nutrients back to your grass, and you’ll start to notice that your soil will become more healthy with each aeration that you do.

What an aeration does for your lawn, though, it just allows your lawn to breathe water, air, and fertilizers to get to the root system. It helps your lawn become thick, manageable. It also helps with thatch buildup, that layer built up on the base of your lawn that doesn’t allow your lawn to breathe and to turn brown.

It helps to prevent browning, it helps to save water, because it’s holding more moisture, the water’s getting to the roots, and it’s making the grass thicker, holding more moisture in the soil, and it just helps your whole root system of your grass. It’s the ideal practice to do for your lawn a couple times a year for sure.

Our topsoil application delivery is a service that we offer. Topsoil comes in many different options. You can get triple mix, you can get peat moss, and our popular favorite one for your lawn is black loam. We highly recommend using the black loam soil for your grass. It’ll hold moisture, and doesn’t have any rich mixture of manure or peat moss inside of it, which will cause weeds if it is in your soil, and we suggest that.

We can deliver a yard of soil to your driveway. Or more, we can deliver a yard or more, but most people order those bags that stay on your driveway in Toronto, those cute bags with the yard soil, so you can order soil and we will deliver that pure quality soil, which we can guarantee that it is completely mixed and completely cleansed, pure with nothing it, directly to your property. If you want us to apply it for you, we can install or apply it for you, or you can apply it yourself if you feel you can, and we offer suggestions for do-it-yourself, if they like to do that.

What happens with our power washing service, what we do, is we’ll get a request to remove either graffiti off of a property, or be it stains, the color of your stones on your house, your house doesn’t look very appealing or very bright, or your deck looks dirty. We offer a power washing service for those things.

We completely power wash your bricks on your house, allowing them to look brand new again. We power wash your deck allowing it to look brand new again, and we power wash your driveway, or your stones, allowing them all to look brand new again. It makes such an incredible difference each and every time I’ve seen the power wash completed, it looks almost like you have a brand-new built home at some times.

We have before and after pictures of that, of how that looks after a power washing. It’s incredible, it’s amazing, the results that a power washing can do.

What happens with our power washing service, what we do, is we’ll get a request to remove either graffiti off of a property, or be it stains, the color of your stones on your house, your house doesn’t look very appealing or very bright, or your deck looks dirty. We offer a power washing service for those things.

We completely power wash your bricks on your house, allowing them to look brand new again. We power wash your deck allowing it to look brand new again, and we power wash your driveway, or your stones, allowing them all to look brand new again. It makes such an incredible difference each and every time I’ve seen the power wash completed, it looks almost like you have a brand-new built home at some times.

We have before and after pictures of that, of how that looks after a power washing. It’s incredible, it’s amazing, the results that a power washing can do.

We offer watering services. Our watering services isn’t an irrigation service, our watering service is a service of simply repairing your irrigation. If there are issues with your irrigation, you can contact us and we can fix the issue. We can repair it. We can start it and set up the system, fix sprinkler heads. We can stop the pipes if they burt in your irrigation system.

As for clients that do not have an irrigation system Continue Reading →