When your landscaping vegetation is close to your pool it will require more chemicals to keep it blue and clean. I asked Chad Nikkel with Aquaman Pools to talk further about this to better understand what goes on chemically with the water when there is excessive landscaping nearby.

First off, the obvious is when the landscaping is nearby you will get more leaves and debris falling into the pool which is messy. However, the organic load increases so you will need more chemicals. Chemical is like sanitizer that keeps algae and viruses away by disintegrating them inside your pool water. Because of this heavy load of nearby vegetation your pool may require 2 visits per week to keep the chemical balance and continue to remove the physical leaves and debris. The double in service will increase cost to the homeowner for extra labor visits and extra chemicals.

As a landscaper we try to recommend better options of trees and plants if you are going to have vegetation near your pool. We either recommend low shedding vegetation or trees that lose all their leaves only once per year in the fall so that there is not constant leaf shed all year. My favorite tree for low shed is a live oak tree (click link to learn more)

http://www.amwua.org/plant/live-oak

Or we also like trees that only lose their leaves once per year like the Chinese Pistache tree (click link below)

http://www.amwua.org/plant/chinese-pistache

or the Shamel Ash tree (click link below)

http://www.whitfillnursery.com/Shamel_Ash-69-5-11.html

These trees grow thick more quickly then the Live Oak tree and lose their leaves only once per year but hardly ever lose their leaves throughout the year which makes them a great option but still should not grow over pools if you can avoid it.

The next important thing to talk about is the plants you choose and how close they are growing near the pool. If you have plant material that is trimmed up and still encroaching a sidewalk it will be an issue because all the new growth is instantly much closer to the pool and the ends of the branches is usually where the flowers will drop from and are usually going to end up in the pool. We also recommend shrubs that do not bloom small blooms frequently and the biggest culprit of this is the bougainvillea shrub. They are constantly dropping small blooms and these flowers almost always end up in the pool

Some of my favorite shrubs around pools are red hibiscus, Texas sage, Medeterranean palms, bottle brush shrubs, orange jubilees. Here is a link to a great website with all desert recommended plants.

http://www.amwua.org/plants

If you have any more questions for Chad or his team at Aquaman Pools please call 480-243-POOL or find him here;

supercleanpools.com
facebook.com/supercleanpools
instagram.com/aquamanpools

If you have any other questions or would like a more detailed list of exactly what’s included in AMS Landscapings lawn care and landscape services, please give us a call at (602) 944-0421 or check out our website, azlawns.com/disclosures

If you would like to see some current pictures of our work please click azlawns.com/pics.