Blooming On Kauai

Wanted: A commercial landscape maintenance firm to keep your Kauai commercial property looking its best.

You want a contractor that is professional (wearing uniforms, polite to your guests), skilled, detail-oriented, and versatile so they can manage extra projects.

You want a crew on your property that will treat your Kauai retail or resort as if it were their own home garden.

Is all of this too much to ask?

Winds are tricky on Kauai. There’s a careful balance between preserving views and breaking gusts of salty air that rush off the Pacific and onto commercial properties.

Many of us on Kauai appreciate the lovely breezes. They temper humidity and just make for a perfectly relaxing climate. Though, steady trade winds do kick up and push stronger winds on to our properties, and wind tunnels from between buildings set close together like on resort properties.

But again, there’s a balance. Guests want clear views of mountains, beaches and water—nothing blocking the way. But windbreaks are beneficial for creating protected, calm spaces.

The good news is, you can find a happy medium by planting trees and shrubs that deflect wind and divert it from your property. For beachside resorts and commercial properties with ocean views, even slender palm trees can act as a form of windbreak to stop gusts from completely barreling through the property.

Kauai property owners located farther inland might prioritize a windbreak over a view. Whatever is most important on your commercial property, here are the five best windbreak trees on Kauai.

Is your commercial landscape maintenance company performing like it should on your Kauai property? Is it meeting your high standards—or is there room for improvement?

Perhaps the contractor just doesn’t get it and is overlooking property maintenance tasks that should be a given if you’re on contract.

We often conduct property walk-throughs with new clients who hire NKO after working with a company that disappointed them. Property managers never realized how much quality they were missing.

The details matter.

Ultimately, Kauai property managers want their resort, retail, HOA and commercial properties to be neat and green — and, of course, not include any unwanteds: Insects, weeds, disease.

So, how do you know if your current Kauai commercial landscaper is giving your property the service level it deserves? Here’s a handy checklist—an audit that you can use as you walk your property. If you flag one item as unsatisfactory, that’s too many.

Whether your property features close-knit cottages that call for privacy, or you simply want to establish a living fence that designates a boundary, plants and shrubs can do the job and double as a fragrant, textural, lush backdrop on your Kauai commercial landscape.

Living fences, also referred to as natural privacy fences, are an attractive alternative to masonry or concrete.

The trees and shrubs you choose for a natural privacy fence blend in with the environment—and on Kauai, “The Garden Isle,” it makes sense to use plants to create barriers on your commercial property.

The entrance to your Kauai building has persuasive potential—it can draw visitors inside or send them on their way to another establishment. It’s a powerful first-impression builder. A building entrance sets the tone for the experience guests will have once they enter, and it speaks volumes about how you care for your property.

The good news is, with some minor, budget-friendly tweaks and basic maintenance, you can spruce up your building entrance. You’ll be amazed at how some extra attention to your entrance will improve the look of your entire Kauai commercial property.

Without spending a lot of money or time, here are three simple and affordable commercial landscape enhancements to improve the entrance of your Kauai building.  

Is the palm tree on your Kauai commercial property dying? Better yet, what does a dying palm tree look like?

Blunt questions, but ones worth asking. There are signs that palm trees are struggling, and if you catch palms before they decline severely you can save a very expensive tree from demise.

Help is on the way!

Smart irrigation is important for every Kauai commercial property because water-saving technologies help us conserve a finite resource. Saving water is environmentally and financially responsible.

Beyond this double benefit, smart controllers provide tools that are not available on basic controllers and legacy irrigation systems.

For example, older irrigation systems were not configured with rain sensors and weather stations that figure in climate, soil type, plant varieties and precipitation into watering patterns.

Basically, smart controllers are high-tech brains behind an irrigation operation—and they take human error out of the watering process.

Let’s talk about how smart irrigation controllers work, what it takes to retrofit an existing commercial irrigation system, and what features they offer that might be beneficial for your Hawaii property.