Stewardship Agreement

The Stewardship Promise

When I accept stewardship of a property, I take responsibility for how the landscape develops over time.

That doesn’t mean constant presence. It means the person who helped shape your landscape stays connected to it — checking in at key moments, catching changes early, and making skilled decisions so you don’t have to.

Over time, I build a detailed understanding of your land: how it behaves, where pressure points appear, which plants thrive. Decisions aren’t made from guesswork or general advice, but from direct experience with your property.
You don’t need to manage the landscape yourself or become an amateur ecologist. The responsibility stays with me.

What’s Included

Every stewardship agreement I take on includes:

• All scheduled site visits
• Seasonal assessment and documentation, shared with you
• Competition management appropriate to your site
• Invasive species monitoring and removal
• Cutback and material management
• Photo documentation at each visit, shared with you
• Site history tracking — building a long-term record of how your landscape develops
• End-of-season summary with recommendations

Visit frequency is based on what your site needs, not a fixed schedule. I hold responsibility for the health of your landscape across the season — not for a set number of visits.

New Installations — Year 1

New plantings receive more intensive attention during their first growing season, when the landscape is most vulnerable. This includes more frequent visits, deer protection installation, weed pressure management, and close monitoring of plant establishment.

Year 1 stewardship is priced accordingly. From Year 2 onward, the work transitions to standard stewardship as the landscape establishes and stabilises.

Work Billed Separately

Some work falls outside the scope of this agreement and is billed separately at a fixed rate per job:

• Emergency visits (storm damage, etc.)
• Major invasive species removal (e.g., large established buckthorn or knotweed)
• Deer protection replacement

I will communicate with you before undertaking any work billed outside this agreement.

Payment

Payment is due in full at the start of the season, or in six equal monthly instalments from May through October. There is no price difference between the two options.

Season and Renewal

The stewardship season runs May 1 through October 31.

This agreement renews automatically each season unless either party provides written notice of cancellation by April 1.
If a client cancels mid-season, fees will be prorated based on the portion of the season completed.\

A Small Practice

I steward a limited number of properties. This allows me to visit the same sites season after season — building the kind of familiarity with a landscape that makes stewardship genuinely effective over time.