Save the Date!

Congrats to Nieves who is celebrating his 5 year anniversary with Preferred!

Nieves is a Commercial Landscape Estimating, Sales and Design Representative for Preferred Landscape and Lighting, a boutique firm based in San Antonio, Texas. He focuses on growing Preferred’s commercial landscape presence. Nieves’ client list consists of some of the largest General Contracting firms in San Antonio. Although his skill is in landscape design, his interests are in expanding urban green spaces for the San Antonio Community to enjoy, water conservation, and sustainable development. 

Nieves grew up in the Austin, Texas area, received his BA in International Relations from St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, Texas, and is currently an MBA in Sustainable Systems candidate at the Bainbridge Graduate Institute in Seattle, Washington. Nieves is a 2010 graduate of the San Antonio Hispanic Chamber’s Alexander Briseño Leadership Development Program, and currently in Class 38 of Leadership San Antonio.

Compliments for Preferred Tree Care services

We just had our annual tree trimming service completed by your crew and we want to take this opportunity to extend a sincere compliment on the work that they have done.  In spite of occasional rain showers throughout the day, your crew continued with their work (in the rain).  They were very thorough with their work and did not hesitate to make requested adjustments to trimming on certain trees.  Their attention to detail provided a welcome feeling of confidence in the work that they were doing.

As always it is a pleasure to work with you and your crew with our annual tree trimming service.

Thanks for a job well done.

Ken Chorn

Fall Planting brings Spring Beauty

In San Antonio, the fall months September through December are the best months to plant bulbs for spring blooms.  Fall bulb varieties include tulips, daffodils, crocus and hyacinths.  The reward for all your hard work this fall is in the spring when your landscape is bursting with colorful blooms.

Planting bulbs is one of the few jobs where a little bit of work provides such an impressive result. It is fast, easy and almost foolproof.  Here are a few tips:

1.  Plant the pointy side up

2.  Plant big bulbs 8" deep and small bulbs 5" deep
3.  Plant them in clusters - not just one bulb alone or them in a single line. 

The SAWS WaterSaver Landcape Coupon program is back just in time for fall!

After a scorcher of a summer, fall is the perfect time to replace your lackluster, high-maintenance grass with something more vibrant (and less needy).

And just in time, the WaterSaver Landscape Coupon program returns with new fall offerings. The two package options — full sun or full shade — will be available Sept. 15-Nov. 30 to SAWS residential water customers.

To get the $100 coupon, you must replace 200 square feet of grass with a drought-tolerant garden bed made up of 15 low-water plants from a specific package. More ambitious gardeners may apply for two coupons to remove 400 square feet.

Some new and exciting aspects of the fall edition include:

• New plant choices including lavender, shrimp plant, Texas persimmon and tough-yet-beautiful Earth-Kind roses!
• A full shade package will be offered, appropriate for homes where very little sunlight makes it through the tree canopy.
• The mulch purchase is no longer required at the nursery where you buy your plants. However, you still must apply 1 cubic yard (about 14 standard bags) of mulch — organic or crushed granite/rock — to the new bed. You can even make your own using leaves, wood chips or rocks as long as it is 2 inches deep.

Don't forget that if you have an in-ground irrigation system, you will have to cap the spray heads in the bed before planting. By doing this, you may also qualify for our newly streamlined Residential Irrigation Design rebate.

In addition to the 15 drought-tolerant plants, each package will include a garden bed plan and a plant care guide.
 For more information, http://www.saws.org/Conservation/Outdoor/Coupon/

Congratulations to Darryl!

We would like to congratulate Darryl Cook on his recent promotion to Vice President and General Manager of Preferred Landscape and Lighting LLC; part of the Millard Group of companies. Darryl has worked for Preferred for over 16 years and was an owner in the company prior to merging with the Millard Group.  Darryl was the first employee for Preferred, and has done almost every job at the company.  At 26 years old he left the wine business to mow lawns on the weekends and work his way into ownership of the fledgling company.  Now he heads up the 8mm plus a year sales and operations for Preferred Texas.  Most recently Darryl managed the significant growth of the Landscape Lighting and Residential Sales/Design Team. 

“I’m so proud to work with a group of people that are considered the best in the industry.  This group has propelled Preferred through one of the worst recessions in this Nation’s history and has come out the other side stronger and more able than ever.  Our amazing people are the reason we have such great customers and will continue to be the reason for our future success.”

Darryl is very involved in the community and currently serves on the board of the North Chamber Leadership Lab Alumni.  Preferred encourages all of their employees to engage in the community though various business, social, and nonprofit organizational memberships.

Testimonial from Highlands Ranch

The following is a quick email we received from one of our commercial maintenance customers, Highlands Ranch Properties.

Thanks again - it really looks 100% better! 

Overall though, everything is looking great! Thanks!

Carolyn  Bentzinger

Highland Village

Community Involvement

Preferred Landscape and Lighting’s company culture has always been to give back to our community.  We do this by hosting annual fundraisers like the ones like our upcoming Fall Fest which is supporting the San Antonio Food Bank.  We also accomplish our goal with community outreach by bringing out our custom BBQ smoker out to other community events and providing and cooking the food.  The following is a letter from a recent event we were apart of with the Boerne Library Foundation.

David,

Thank you so much for supporting the Live at the Library program with the use of your smoker.  We are grateful for your time and your commitment to the community.   For the last eight months, we have been raising funds for this program towards a matching grant with the Kronkosky Charitable Foundation.  Your involvement was one of the reasons that we were able to reach our goal! 

We can't thank you enough for coming out to help us kick off this season.  I hope that we will be able to have you come out and cook for us again.   We had several people tell us how wonderful it was to see Preferred Landscape and Lighting out for another concert. 

Thank you!

Kind Regards,

Ariel Brooks-Stevens

Executive Director

451 N Main Bldg. 100 - Boerne, TX 78006

cell: 210-421-6132

www.boernelibraryfoundation.org

Save the Date

Preferred Landscape and Lighting will be holding our annual Fall Festival on October 24th.  We hope you can join us!  Mark it on your calendar - more details to follow as we get closer to the date!

Its September Already?

This year is flying by, and it has been another hot and DRY summer. A lot of lawns have gone dormant and are storing their energy for the fall growing season, which is hopefully right around the corner.

The summer is not over- unfortunately but here at Preferred we are already gearing up for winter, well, what we living in the San Antonio area consider “winter”.  We are putting in orders for cool season color change outs, scheduling fall fertilizations and even putting up holiday lights! Which means it is getting close to the time we top dress the turf with organic compost, this is the equivalent to mulching your lawn. Like you would mulch your shrubs trees and flower beds, but naturally you wouldn’t apply the same type of mulch to the lawn, top dressing has many benefits to a healthy, disease resistant, and green lawn.

Benefits to top dressing lawns with organic compost:

• Moisture retention by improving the soils ability to hold water
•  Fewer required waterings
• Provide nutrients for plants, earth worms, microbes and other beneficial soil life
• Reduction in needed fertilizer applications
• Loosens compacted soil and improves aeration and drainage
• Nutrients are readily available in the soil come spring growing season
•  Reduces thatch build up – thatch can cause the perfect microenvironment for fungus (brown patch & take all patch)

Lawns are our biggest water consumers. For this reason lawns are the most important places to practice water conservation by mulching. Lawns with no crumb structure, no humus, no beneficial soil life or root colonizing microbes require more care. It is best to supply one-half inch of fine screened compost in the fall or early winter after the grass has stopped growing due to drop in temperature. In our area this is something usually scheduled from early November into early January because that is when our daytime temperatures typically drop below 70°.

Bass Pro Shop

We love hearing from our clients!  The following is a note we received regarding our commercial maintenance division. 

Just wanted to commend you and Preferred Landscape and Lighting for outstanding landscape and irrigation services. As you know, branding is crucial for our success and yours and the knowledge, expertise and customer service provided and exhibited by you and your team sets the example for others to follow.

 

Your response to our needs are always met in a timely and professional manner.

Tye Preston

Maintenance Manager

Bass Pro Shops #40