Everybody wants to feel safe at home.
Sure, tenants want their homes to look nice and be welcoming, but if you neglect safety and security in your apartment landscaping, all the flowers in the world won’t keep your renewal rates up.
Are you making the right safety and security choices with your apartment complex landscaping design? Or the wrong ones?
Here’s a look:
Tree Branch Safety
Wrong Choice: Let branches grow too low, and tenants walking to their building could walk right into them. Low branches can also become vision obstructions in areas where there are exits from parking areas or streets.
Neglect dead branches and they could come crashing down onto people or vehicles.
Ignore regular, proactive pruning and trees will become too thick and cause other plant health issues.
Right Choice: Keep branches trimmed up and out of the way. Proactively pruning trees will reduce liability concerns and help the appearance of your property as well as the overall health of your tree investments.
Shrub Safety
Wrong choice: Left unattended, shrubs can easily grow over your security cameras and lighting or block the signage tenants and visitors need to navigate. Overgrown shrubs are also perfect places for intruders to hide.
Right Choice: Your commercial landscaping company’s crews should regularly trim your shrubs and bushes to keep your property safe. Well-tended shrubs are a sign to tenants that the whole place is cared for, safe and secure. 
Irrigation System Safety
Wrong Choice: If nobody pays attention, they might not notice that sprinkler heads sometimes get stuck, protruding a couple of inches above the ground instead of staying safely tucked below ground level when not operating. That’s a tripping hazard.
Right Choice: Vigilant landscaping crews regularly walk properties to check for wayward sprinkler heads that could cause people to trip.
Sidewalk Safety
Wrong Choice: Have you looked at your sidewalks lately? Cracks can soon turn into crumbling chunks that are not only unsightly but can cause pedestrians to trip.
Slick mud can also cause pedestrians to slip and fall.
Right Choice: Replace portions or entire stretches of walkways with pavers. They’re not only safer, but they look more attractive for apartment landscaping, too.
Keep mud cleaned up to avoid fall or trip hazards.
Water Management Safety
Wrong Choice: Left unattended, gutter downspouts and hardscape drainage areas can get clogged with leaves and other landscape debris, causing water to back up and flood.
Excess water can damage your building’s foundation, erode and crack sidewalks, driveways and retaining walls.
Too much water creates mold and mildew and causes cracks in interior walls and exterior surfaces. Damp conditions can even encourage insects and rodents to breed.
Right Choice: Keep gutter downspouts, drains and spillways free of landscape debris. If applicable, extend downspouts underground to emit away from the foundation or into other drains.
Talk to your landscaping company about your options for water management solutions as part of your apartment complex landscaping design.
Retention or detention ponds, bioswales or a rainwater harvesting system can also help get the water under control.
Lighting Safety
Wrong choice: Without enough exterior or landscape lighting, tenants and visitors don’t feel safe walking from their apartments to their cars. Intruders can easily lurk and hide. Pedestrians can trip and fall.
Right Choice: Ample, welcoming landscape lighting is one of the best ways to keep your apartments full of happy tenants.
It not only makes your apartment complex more appealing, it makes it safer. Criminals have fewer places to hide. It deters them from breaking in, vandalizing or lurking in the shadows waiting for potential victims.
Lighting also provides a sense of security for tenants and visitors as they walk to their vehicles at night. Dark, creepy parking lots? Nobody signs a lease there.
As you incorporate lighting into your apartment complex landscaping design, pay special attention to entrances, parking lots, walkways, common areas and the areas around security cameras.
Playground Safety
Wrong Choice: Neglect safety issues on your playground and kids can get injured. That’s a liability concern you don’t need.
Right Choice: Your commercial landscaping company crews should be on the lookout for potential hazards, from poison ivy to tripping hazards at the edges of playscapes.
There’s a right choice for playground mulch, too.
Regular mulch tends to get hard and compacted over time, making tumbles dangerous.
Most mulch manufacturers make special kid-safe mulch with softer edges that resist compacting. Rubber mulch is a good choice, too.
Trust Your Apartment Complex Landscaping Design to North by Northwest
Need apartment complex landscaping ideas that will make your property appealing to safety-conscious tenants?
We’d love to partner with you to make your apartment landscaping safe and secure and your job hassle-free.
Are you ready for stress-free landscaping? Schedule a time to meet with one of our experts today. We’ll gather the details, create a customized plan just for you, and you can stop stressing as we improve and beautify your commercial property.
