Have you ever considered using a lawn care service? While hiring a company to care for your lawn might not be right for everyone, it can be beneficial in more situations and have greater benefits than you might expect. If you love slinging bags of fertilizer and herbicide on your days off and have always gotten picture-perfect results with your lawn care regimen, stop reading here-a lawn care service is not for you.

Still reading? Most of you probably are. Let’s look at some circumstances where a lawn care service makes sense and see if any seem familiar.

You used to love all kinds of yard work and take great pride in your property’s appearance but it’s getting a little harder every year. Or maybe an illness or injury limits the amount of time you can devote to caring for your lawn. Having temporary or permanent physical limitations is one reason to entrust lawn care to a service.

Soccer practice, baseball games, math tutoring-getting your kids to all their activities can take up lots of time, especially on weekends. Or long hours at work leave you looking forward to relaxing on the weekends and wrestling bags of lawn food or calculating how many pounds of N per thousand square feet isn’t your idea of a good time.

You’ve just purchased a new home, and the previous owners neglected the lawn, leaving a bigger renovation job than you’re prepared to or able to handle. Conversely, maybe you’re selling soon, and want to maximize the value of your property with knockout curb appeal.

What product goes on when? How much do you have to buy, and where will you store the extra safely? Is using the wrong product a waste of money…or even worse could it harm your lawn, pets or family? Do you have the equipment to apply lawn products properly? Do you know how to calibrate it for best results and safety? Maybe you don’t even know where to begin with lawn care, or have been doing it yourself but haven’t gotten the results you wanted.

Plenty of people will identify with at least one of these scenarios. Any of these alone are good reason to consider a lawn care service, but there’s another reason: results. Superb lawn care is a combination of correct timing, precision application and quality product. Some people start out strong in the spring but when weather gets nice they would rather get away for the weekend, and miss the window for pre-emergent applications. Most homeowners don’t know how to calibrate equipment and end up applying too much or too little of a product. This can result in no benefit at all for all your hard work, or worse, damage. The cost for the product and the time invested is wasted.

Consistent, correct application of quality lawn care products over time builds a stronger, deeper, more efficient root system. This makes grass more drought tolerant, resulting in less water use (remember your water bill last summer?). This also makes a healthier, thicker lawn with fewer weeds, so less herbicide is needed. That’s a plus for your family and the environment.