Striking a balance between homeowners and aesthetics

There are a multitude of personal views and opinions on landscaping. When you live in a planned community some of those personal views will be expressed and chances are they will be conflicting views. Money allowing this is an area that should always be handled with a plan and by a professional company.

Over the last year we have received some good and not so good ideas regarding ways to offset increases on landscaping. Here are a few that didn’t make the grade:

• One suggested that we hire a landscaper that would arrive only when we called. This way if the weather had been dry and there was no rain we could hold off on a cut or only cut those areas that were shaded had growth;
• Someone planted artificial flowers outside their unit, they felt it would save on replanting;
• And we had a resident plant wild flowers and wild grass in an effort to reduce on purchasing annuals.

None could conceive that their ideas were not well received by the board, other residents, or our contractors. While all of these ideas could work in your personal single family home they were not conducive to an expansive property that stretched over 18 acres.

There are great projects that condo residents can do working together to enhance the curb appeal while saving a few dollars:

• Plan a spruce up/clean up day. Ask for resident volunteers to work around buildings cleaning up, reducing weeds and plantings gone badly. Some complexes have wooded areas, trash areas, and other areas that tend to over grow or collect blowing trash.
• Purchase plants and/or mulch in bulk and make an outing of it. Planning something like this around a family day with a picnic lunch after is a great way to bring together a community.
• Adopt a planter. Ask residents if they would be willing to volunteer to take care of a planter or planting bed. This has worked for us with some success. We still have to care of some planting barrels and planting beds while others are done by residents that are close and want them to look nice every year.

Living in a planned community is always about balance. This happens to be an area where the results of a decision are very apparent because the result will be outside of the units and visible not only to residents but also to neighbors and everyone who passes the community.

Michael Zimmer is the President of The Meadows of Southington Condominium Association, Inc. Michael has served on the board of directors for this 166 unit complex in Southington for over 15 years and has held the position of President for the last 12 years. He can be contacted via email at mjzimmer@bigplanet.com