Franklin lawns kept sharp all season

Old lots downtown, new lots west of town

The blocks around downtown Franklin are old, and the lots are narrow and deep with big hardwoods standing over most of them. That means shade grass, thin turf under the drip line, and a lot of hand work around stone edging, brick walks, old iron fence and the roots that lift up out of the ground. A wide deck mower does that yard no favors. We cut those lawns with a smaller machine, trim the tight spots by hand, and keep the wheels off the beds and off the soft ground near the trees.

Out west and south of town it is a different yard entirely. Those subdivisions were graded and built on rolling ground, so the topsoil sits thin over clay and the rock is never far down. Full sun lots, sprinkler heads sitting proud in the turf, mailbox beds, and a whole street where every lawn gets looked at against the neighbors. What those lawns want is a consistent height and a straight edge along the drive and the walk, kept up on a schedule, because everything out there is on show from the road.

Williamson County is hill country and it shows up in the yards. Lots run uphill from the street or fall away toward a creek at the back, and the low corner down near the Harpeth bottoms stays soft long after the rest of the yard has dried out. Cutting a slope while it is wet tears the turf and leaves ruts you will be looking at all summer. So we read the ground before the mower comes off the trailer, take the wet ground last or leave it for the next visit, and tell you why instead of scalping it.

• Deck height set for shade turf under the hardwoods
• Hand trimming around stone edging and lifted roots
• A straight edge cut along the drive and walk
• Bed lines cut clean before any mulch goes down
• Clippings blown off the hard surfaces before we leave

What summer does to a Franklin lawn

Most of the older lawns in Franklin are tall fescue, and fescue does not enjoy a Middle Tennessee July. It grows hard through the spring, then the heat arrives, the nights stay warm and humid, and the stand thins from the middle where no air moves. Cut it short in that stretch and you cook it. So the deck goes up when the heat sets in and the blades stay sharp, because a clean cut heals over and a torn one browns at the tip and gives fungus a way in.

Every gap that opens up in July gets filled by something, and it is never the grass you wanted. Crabgrass comes in along the hot edge next to the drive and the curb, and nutsedge shoots up out of the low wet corners a few days after a cut. Weed control here is about timing more than anything else. Put something down before the soil warms in late winter and most of the crabgrass never shows, and what is left after that is spot work rather than a rescue.

Fall is the other half of the job. The heat breaks, the broadleaf weeds start pulling energy back down into the root, and that is when treating them actually takes hold. At the same time the hardwoods that keep those old streets cool drop everything they have, and a mat of wet leaves left sitting on turf all winter kills the grass underneath in patches you will be staring at come April. Leaves have to keep moving off the lawn through the fall, and that is cheaper than fixing bare ground in the spring.

Mulch and bed work on rocky ground

Mulch is the part people think is simple, and it is the part that gets done wrong most often. Around here the ground under a bed is rarely soil the whole way down. On the newer builds it is graded fill with rock and broken block left over from construction, and on the older places it is whatever has been piled into that bed over the years. Before anything goes down the bed gets cleaned out and a real edge gets cut, because mulch spread over weeds and a soft line looks worse in a month than it did before.

Depth matters more than color. Spread it thin and the sun still reaches the soil, the weeds come straight through, and you are buying mulch again by midsummer. Pile it deep and water struggles to get to the root, which is a real problem on our clay, where rain wants to sit on the surface and run off anyway. And mulch heaped up against the trunk of a tree holds wet bark against wood and rots it, which is a slow way to lose a shade tree that has been there since the house was built.

Sometimes the bed itself is the problem and no amount of mulch covers for it. Old rock borders sunk down into the turf, or a bed sitting below the grade of the lawn so every storm drains straight into it and stays. That kind of thing is worth doing properly once, before it gets covered over for another season. A customer put it this way in her Google review: "He cleared out our beds, took away large rock and leveled our beds to make it easier to plant and fill in the future."

Getting a price in Franklin

To get a number for your yard, call (615) 987-9982 or send the form on this page, tell us what street you are on in Franklin and roughly what you want handled, and we will come out and look at it. The estimate is free, and the price comes to you in writing before anything starts, with the mowing and the bed work broken out separately, so you can see what you are paying for and drop whatever you do not want.