Objective: This course will give licensees an overall knowledge of how to set up and maintain healthy lawns, flower gardens, and shrub gardens from an environmental and aesthetic aspect. The course focuses on environmental best practices to promote healthy neighborhoods, and the overall community. Licensees can use this knowledge to better help their seller clients with landscape curb appeal, and help buyer clients who are interested in creating an aesthetically pleasing and environmentally healthy green space.

Section 1 - Soil Compaction
Chapter 1: Basic Understanding of Soil
Chapter 2: Causes and Impacts of Soil Compaction
Chapter 3: Alleviating Soil Compaction

Section 2: Increasing Soil Organic Matter
Chapter 1: Soil Organic Matter
Chapter 2: Causes and impacts of Poor Soil Organic Matter
Chapter 3: Practices to Increase Soil Organic Matter

Section 3: Establishment of a lawn
Chapter 1: Seeding vs Sodding
Chapter 2: Selection of Grass Seed or Sod Type

Section 4: Cultural Lawn Care Practices
Chapter 1: Mowing Cut Height
Chapter 2: Mowing Frequency

Section 5: Lawn irrigation
Chapter 1: Necessity and impacts of lawn watering
Chapter 2: Reducing lawn watering
Chapter 3: Determining water needs
Chapter 4: Calibrating a sprinkler system
Chapter 5: Determining watering frequency and timing

Section 6: Lawn Fertilization
Chapter 1: Lawn Fertilizer Objectives
Chapter 2: Selecting the Correct Fertilizer
Chapter 3: Fertilizer Application Rate Guidelines
Chapter 4: Fertilizer Application Practices
Chapter 5: Optimal Timing of Fertilizer Applications
Chapter 6: Water Quality Impact of Fertilizer Runoff

Section 7: Herbicide Applications
Chapter 1: The Need for Herbicide Applications on Lawn
Chapter 2: Environmental Problems with Herbicide Applications
Chapter 3: Selecting the Correct Herbicide
Chapter 4: Timing of Herbicide Applications

Section 8: Decreasing Turf Areas
Chapter 1: The Problem with Grass
Chapter 2: Flower Beds
Chapter 3: Shrub Beds
Chapter 4: Butterfly Gardens and Prairie Plantings
Chapter 5 – Buffer Plantings
Chapter 6 – Rain Gardens