If you work around the exterior of your home fairly regularly, your chances of unintentionally causing some type of collateral damage are probably pretty decent.

As a company that typically works on a good number of homes on a weekly basis, in the “good” weather months of the year, we are no exception to this.

As careful as we aim to be and coach our people in the field to be, the obvious risk of inadvertently smooshing a plant, damaging a bush, or clipping a tree is constantly there.

Once in a while this type of situation occurs.

Admittedly, I have most likely the least green thumb on the planet.

On occasion, when one of our staff does damage some type of vegetation at a Client’s, we have an action plan in place of what to do.

• The first thing we do is sincerely apologize to the Client as we truly do not mean to ever harm anything in their yard and feel extraordinarily awful every time it happens.

Whether it was an extremely meaningful plant or one that is a dime-a-dozen perennial that is just kind of “there”, we do not enjoy this experience at all nor having the conversation that has to be had with the Client afterward.

• The next thing we do, assuming the Client is OK with us helping to rectify things, is get on the phone to one of the landscapers we work with.

From there, the landscaper will typically come out, evaluate what happened, and then perhaps even reach out to one of the nurseries they work with for suggestions.

The vast majority of the time, all is not lost and the plant is able to be salvaged.

In the cases where the plant does have to be replaced, our landscaper will use their expertise to still try and salvage the planting while adding another one of the same type in its space.

It seems most often the type of plant that we run into (no pun intended…) is a perennial that normally returns on a yearly basis.

If this is the type of plant that sustains the damage, our landscaper will either stabilize it as best they can for the rest of the growing season or cut it back as one would usually prune it at the end of the Fall or beginning of the Spring.

Whether you or a professional working around your home happens to accidentally damage any plant-life that is growing around it, as frustrating and deflating as the incident can be, more often than not there is something that can be done to treat the plant and make sure that it will be able to mend itself back to what it had been at some point in the time to come.