Our Services

At Southern Grounds, LLC we offers essential services including garden design, lawn care, planting, hardscaping for patios and walkways, and seasonal maintenance to enhance and maintain the beauty of outdoor spaces

Landscaping

Our landscaping services are designed to create your dream outdoor space. From initial consultation to the final touches, we work with you every step of the way to ensure your vision becomes a reality. Our experts have the experience and skills to tackle any landscaping challenge and deliver a transformative result that enhances the beauty and value of your property.

Sod Installation and Grading

A lush, green lawn can significantly improve your home's curb appeal. Our Sod Install and Grading services are aimed at giving you that perfect, even, and beautiful lawn you've always wanted. We use top-quality sod and deploy professional grading techniques to ensure proper drainage and longevity for your new lawn.

Lawn Care Maintenance

Keeping your lawn looking its best can be time-consuming and labor-intensive. Our Lawn Care and Maintenance service takes this burden off your shoulders. We offer mowing, edging, fertilization, and more, all customized to fit your lawn's specific needs. You can trust us to keep your lawn lush, green, and perfectly manicured.

Garden Clean Ups

A well-maintained garden is the cornerstone of a beautiful property but keeping it clean can be a chore. Our Garden Clean-Up service removes weeds, dead plants, and debris to give your garden a fresh start. This service is perfect for spring cleaning or preparing your garden for winter dormancy, ensuring it stays healthy and vibrant year-round

Full Service Maintenance

For those who prefer a hands-off approach to their outdoor spaces, we offer Full-Service Maintenance packages. These include everything from regular lawn care to seasonal task. Let us handle all the hard work, so you can simply enjoy your beautiful outdoor living area.

Landscaping Maintenance

Landscapes are living, evolving things that require regular care to look their best. Our Landscaping Maintenance service includes pruning, mulching, irrigation checks, and other routine tasks to keep your landscape healthy and beautiful. With our help, your outdoor space will not only look good today but thrive for years to come.

FAQ

What is landscaping vs. hardscaping?

Modern landscaping refers to the designing, planning, and construction of gardens and other features that both create useable space for outdoor activities, and enhance the appearance around a home. Landscaping includes hardscaping and softscaping, although many people refer to them softscaping and landscaping interchangeably. Hardscaping would be the aspect that includes non-organic materials such as stone and woodwork, retaining walls, decks, firepits, and more. Softscaping would then refer to planting designs, creating berms and grading, and mulching. Capital Landscaping does both landscape and hardscape design in the greater Des Moines, IA area.

What's the difference between annuals and perennials?

Annuals grow for one season, and then die when the weather gets cold. Perennials grow for multiple seasons, and regrow every spring after being in dormancy during the winter. Examples of popular annuals in Iowa are pansies, snapdragons, petunias, geraniums, salvia, California poppy, violas, and many more. Some perennial examples are daffodils, phlox, peonies, purple coneflower, daylilies, black-eyed susan, Virginia bluebells, coral bells, hostas, and more.

How do I keep disease away from my plants?

With a few DIY techniques

Keep your garden clean. Pick up plant debris, remove dying stems or branches, weed the area regularly, and toss the debris in the garbage.
Fertilize just enough to keep your plants happy – too much fertilizer promotes weak growth which is susceptible to disease.
Wait to plant until the soil is warmed up. Planting to early will put extra stress on your plants and make them more susceptible to disease in the soil.
Use mulch to keep weeds at bay and harmful fungi in th soil away.
Inspect and remove infected stems and leaves. As soon as you notice signs of disease, carefully remove the leaf o stems and throw it away as soon as possible. y removing disease early on, you can help your plants to continue to grow healthily.

How do I permanently get rid of weeds?

This is a tough one. The conditions that are good for plant growth are naturally good for weed growth. But, there are steps you can take to prevent weed growth early on, and remove weeds if they do appear. First of all, use a landscaping fabric in your flower beds and garden to cover the soil where you don’t want weeds to grow. Then use a weed preventer, such as Preen, to further discourage weed growth. If weeds do appear, pull the entire weed, including the root, early on to prevent it from coming back. For cracks in concrete and pavers, use a commercial herbicide to kill weeds that appear. For a more organic method, try using vinegar in a spray bottle. Be warned, herbicides, including vinegar, will kill all plants they touch, not only weeds.

Why is professional lawn maintenance so important?

Whether or not you hire a professional is up to you, but paying meticulous attention to your lawn will provide a multitude of benefits. It’ll give you a great space for your family to enjoy, increase the value of your home, provide oxygen to the environment, and cool down the area around your home, making your air conditioner’s job easier.

An established lawn will also have a deep root system that controls erosion, runoff, and the purity of water that is funneled into the groundwater supply. Healthy lawns can trap the dust and impurities that we want to keep out of that.

What is the benefit of adding mulch to flower beds?

There are many benefits, including:

Helping the soil retain moisture
Contributing to soil health as the breakdown of the mulch happens over time
Blocking the sunlight to pesky weeds, helping to keep them at bay
Repelling insects, depending on the type of mulch used
Controlling soil erosion

Should I rake up leaves or mulch them into my lawn with a mower?

We recommend mulching leaves, as they will add nutrients to your soil and make for a healthier lawn. Raking up the leaves will not harm your lawn, but you’ll also be missing out on the benefits leaves provide. One note of caution, do not ignore blankets of full leaves on your lawn, either raking or mulching is necessary. If you don’t, the leaves can actually do more harm than good since they’ll block sunlight and air from getting to the grass. This problem can be compounded when it rains, eventually leading to turf diseases or dead grass.

Does adding more plants to my landscape help the environment?

Absolutely! Every living plant does its job to filter carbon dioxide out of the environment — one tree alone can remove 26 pounds of CO2 annually, equaling about 11,000 miles of vehicle emissions. Plants also help keep debris and pollution out of our water supply. On top of that, trees that cast shade on your home will keep it cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter, giving your air conditioner and heating units a break. If you’re thinking about planting additional trees, shrubs, or flowers, they will all benefit our environment in their own unique way, so go for it!