When it comes to your grounds and landscaping, safety isn’t just a priority, or an afterthought once you’ve got it all looking pretty. It’s a fundamental part of creating a welcoming environment for everyone who sets foot on your premises – whether they work there or are just visiting. Your external grounds are the first point of contact these people will have with your business, so making sure they are safe and well-maintained should be your first priority. Whether you run a retail unit, a business park, a public space or even a residential home, you should always be paying attention to what your grounds look like, and how safe they really are. At Pod Landscapes, it’s something we’re quite passionate about!
How Do You Make Outdoor Areas Safe?
Risk Assessments: Before embarking on any landscaping or maintenance project, especially in areas that might have become overgrown or neglected, your first step should be to conduct a thorough risk assessment. Identify potential hazards such as uneven surfaces, slippery pathways, overgrown vegetation, or inadequate lighting. By understanding the risks, you, or your landscaping company, can develop strategies to mitigate them effectively. That will usually start by bringing the areas back into condition, which will remove a lot of hazards and make for a much more pleasant outdoor experience.
Regular Maintenance: Regular upkeep of outdoor spaces is essential to both prevent accidents and keep and neat and tidy appearance. This includes mowing lawns, trimming hedges, pruning trees and clearing debris. This includes making sure that all sight lines in car parks, entrances and exits are kept clear, so that people in the building can get a good view of vehicles and people at all times. All of these routine tasks should be scheduled with a professional grounds maintenance company to ensure they’re completed on time and your premises can look good all year round.
Proper Lighting: Depending on the type of business you run, you might have a lot of visitors in the evening, or none at all. But even strictly daytime-only businesses need to have external lighting in place for those dark winter afternoons. Poorly lit pathways and car parks can increase the risk of trips and falls, so make sure you have energy-efficient LED lighting in place to keep people safe.
Clear Walkways & Emergency Passages: Anywhere that people are going to walk, especially if they’re in a hurry, need to be clear and easy to navigate. This can include paths, stepping stones and fire escapes. It’s your duty as the premises owner to ensure that you have clear passageways to all escape routes (which includes outdoor fire escapes) and that outdoor pathways are kept safe for pedestrian traffic. This might include leaf clearance, moss cleaning to prevent slips, and weed management to stop pathways becoming overgrown.
Signage: Clearly marked signage is another must for outdoor safety. Not only does it guide visitors around your premises, it alerts them to potential hazards like wet surfaces, uneven terrain or construction zones. Traffic signage and markings are also important if you have moving vehicles in the area. You’d be amazed how many signs are we see that are quickly covered by vegetation that isn’t kept in check, which means people can’t read the signs at all!
Seasonal Maintenance: Different seasons will bring different challenges to your outdoor safety, and you need to understand and manage them appropriately. For example, during autumn and winter your main focus will be mitigating slips by clearing leaves from paths, car parks and walkways quickly, removing any built-up moss from the same areas, and treating the areas to prevent ice and snow if necessary. In the summer months, it’s all about staying on top of the weeds, providing shaded rest areas, and making sure your grounds are watered regularly to stop them becoming a parched fire risk.
Training and Education: On top of all that, you also need to educate your staff members and contractors about outdoor safety. Provide training on hazard recognition, proper equipment use and emergency procedures, so that everyone is well-equipped to handle risks and keep everyone safe.
At Pod Landscapes we provide professional grounds maintenance services to businesses and large residential homes, including the management of many aspects of outdoor safety, like weeds, moss, leaves and grounds maintenance. We believe that safety should be a number one priority, which is why all of our teams are formally trained in safe working practices, and have regular refreshers on emergency first aid in the workplace. By supporting these elements, we are helping business owners fulfil their health and safety obligations to the best standard possible. If you would like to discuss a maintenance plan to keep your grounds tidy, just get in touch with the team for a free consultation.
