With 2025 drawing to a close, we’ve got all eyes on planning for next year. If you manage any form of site or outdoor space, this means it’s time to make sure that your grounds maintenance plans are all firmed up for the months ahead. After all, keeping your grounds properly maintained is key to creating and sustaining an inspiring environment for the next year and beyond.

With this in mind, we’ll walk you through what you need to include in your own grounds maintenance schedule to deliver great results for your outdoor areas in 2026.

Conduct An Initial Site Survey

The first thing you need to make sure you do before you begin putting together a grounds maintenance schedule is to conduct a thorough site survey. This will provide you with all of the key information you need before you put together a plan. Check the entirety of the grounds to outline the tasks that need to be done, as well as their priority. From there, you can decide on your goals for the year and put together a strategy to help you get there. You’ll want to work out your budget and how frequently tasks need to be completed at this stage.

Grass Cutting And Lawn Maintenance

One of the core aspects of grounds maintenance is grass cutting. It helps to keep your grounds looking tidy, encourages healthy growth, and prevents weeds from taking over, so all around it’s a pretty important job. How often this needs doing can vary. For most of our clients, we’ll schedule a grass cut every two weeks between late spring and into the first part of the summer. This frequency can then drop off a little during the height of summer as the warm weather burns off the grass. Come autumn, grass cutting regularity might need to increase again when growth spurts happen. By winter, you can then take it off your grounds maintenance schedule altogether as the grass goes dormant and stops growing. 

Hedge Trimming

Hedge trimming helps you to keep them from becoming overgrown, which looks untidy and can become an obstruction for pathways and signage. It also makes them look much neater overall and ensures that diseased growths are removed before they can infect the whole hedge. Generally, hedges need trimming twice a year, but some people do opt to undergo a single yearly trim instead. It all depends on how fast your hedge grows and how neat you want it to look.

Weed Control

Weeds are a major pain. They make everything look untidy and neglected, for starters, but that’s just the beginning of the trouble they cause. They can cause serious damage to tarmac and paving, and in extreme cases, can even start growing into your buildings through cracks in the wall. For that reason, we highly recommend staying on top of weeds and making removal a regular task as part of your grounds maintenance plan.

Landscaping

Landscaping projects aren’t so much part of a regular grounds maintenance schedule, but we do recommend that you consider any landscaping work you need done when conducting your site survey. Redesigning an area to provide your grounds with better aesthetics or easier grounds maintenance is always a good idea. 

Seasonal Work

You should always factor seasonal tasks into your grounds maintenance schedule. Autumn leaves and ice and snow in winter need to be addressed to prevent them from becoming hazards, making the grounds harder to access and generally bringing down aesthetic quality. Make sure you’ve broken your plan down into seasons to proactively address these problems, rather than having to panic fix when damage is already done.

Partner With Arborcure

If you’re looking for a grounds maintenance specialist who can perform all of these tasks for you and more, then look no further than Arborcure. With over 30 years in the industry, our expertise allows us to deliver a consistently high standard of work in good time. We’re fully assured and accredited, and we’re happy to service grounds all across the South-West. Get in contact with us today to begin a consultation and find out more about how Arborcure can help you create a suitable schedule of maintenance for your grounds.