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Tip: Keep your clients happy with an aftercare program. After you've designed, installed and maintained a site through the summer, continue the care through fall, winter and spring. Send out professional people to do a professional job and watch your retention rate rise.

For optimal results, a professionally designed landscape should be professionally maintained throughout the year. Many clients expect to pay for a landscape firm's design, installation and perhaps spring and summer maintenance, but don't expect to continue the service into the fall and winter. These "down" months can be the best times in terms of plants' lifecycles to prune, re-mulch, and otherwise care for perennials.

Designscapes of East Patchogue, NY, offers off-season maintenance through what the company has named its Winter Pruning and Health Program. This aftercare program not only benefits the client, but has many company benefits as well, says Dan Steigerwald, the President and CEO of Designscapes. "It keeps the jobs looking good and it's also a good way to keep your employees busy in the wintertime."

The most lucrative benefit, though, may be the increase in retention rates that the company has seen since it started offering the aftercare program. "Our retention rate has risen about 50 percent," says Steigerwald. "We expect as the program proves itself, that we'll see retention rates rise 70 to 100 percent.

Designscapes is a design/build firm that specializes in high-end residential and commercial clients. Steigerwald encourages his clients to sign up for the Winter Pruning and Health Program in the interest of the landscape design. "As a designer, it's important to keep certain shapes in mind. The program keeps the design integrity in place." The program was, in fact, developed by the company's design manager. A master gardener and certified nursery professionals do the aftercare work. In terms of the plants, Steigerwald says the aftercare program will improve the growth patterns by 100 percent in only two to three years. "We're pruning plants in their off-time, so there's much less stress."

Steigerwald claims that new jobs seek him out and that they rarely go out and bid. His year-round approach to landscape design has earned the 15-year-old firm a reputation of first-class service in the Long Island area. "It's all about service. We get top dollar on Long Island and we hold their hand every step of the way."