By Nancy Brumback, Contributing Writer
Business Name: Burnham Landscape Maintenance Co.
Address: 789 Wachusett St., Holden
Owners: David Burnham, Christopher Carlson, Eric Carlson
Contact Information: 508-829-3809
What services does Burnham Landscape provide?
“We do landscaping design and installation, lawn and landscape maintenance, and we sell bark mulch products wholesale and retail,” noted David Burnham.
“We have a landscape designer. Then we do the whole installation, including plantings, walks, patios and any other features.
“On the maintenance side of the business, we take care of both commercial and residential properties. We offer full-service maintenance, including lawn fertilizing and taking care of all the plantings. Customers can decide how extensive a level of service they want, from just spring and fall clean-up to weekly lawn service, weeding, whatever they need.
“In the winter, we do both commercial and residential snow plowing.”
What geographic area do you cover?
“For snow plowing, we stick just to the Holden area,” Burnham said, noting the difficulty of reaching distant customers for that service.
“For the lawn and landscape work, we cover Holden, Princeton, Rutland, Paxton, Boylston, West Boylston, Sterling, Shrewsbury, Grafton, North Grafton, Westborough and Southborough??”pretty much the Worcester County area.”
Which products to you sell here?
“Bark mulches, screened loam, compost, and certified playground chips. We will deliver or people can pick up the products” at the firm's Holden facility, he said. “We also sell wholesale to landscaping companies.”
How long have you been in the landscaping business?
“I'se been doing this about 44 years,” Burnham said. “I started part-time. I was working inside and didn's like being inside, so I started doing this work on the side and then went to full-time.” He owns the family business with two of his stepsons, Christopher and Eric Carlson.
What should people be doing right now for their lawn and landscaping?
“They should be reseeding or fertilizing and liming any bad areas of the lawn. And watering if they can and if we aren's getting enough rain.
“By the middle of September you should be finished with any pruning and trimming to give the shrubs a chance to heal before winter. Some branches may need to be trimmed if it looks like they won's support snow or ice and will get damaged. If you prune flowering shrubs now, you'sl remove the buds so that should wait until after the shrubs bloom in the spring,” Burnham advised.
“We don's like to do planting after about the middle of October. Any new plantings should be watered right up to the time the ground freezes. Lawn seeding should be done by the first part of October.
“If you mulch early in the fall, the mulch will hold the moisture from fall rains in the ground. You can also add mulch after the ground has frozen or wait until spring. But you don's want to mulch in the spring until after the ground has thawed, otherwise the mulch will keep the ground frozen too long.”
What sets your company apart?
“We'se been in business for a long time and still have many of our original customers. Most of our employees have been with us for a long time. We take pride in our work and have loyalty to our customers.”
Editor's Note: The preceding is not an endorsement and is presented for informational purposes only.
