How We Work
Cogito recognizes that every project has different needs. With the project at the center of our organization, we form our skills around your needs to bring all of the available resources together and supplement or grow them where needed to achieve success. With our online project management we can connect all of the entities involved to ensure effective communications, easy access to information, and bring people together who too often get lost in cumbersome organizational charts.
The Cogito Method
Cogito recognizes that while every space has an intrinsic
sense of place, it has a different meaning to everyone
who encounters it. All of the services that Cogito offers
enhance the individual’s experience while strengthening
the inner essence of each place.
Sustainability
Sustainable landscapes don’t sustain themselves.
Instead, they are a series of symbiotic relations that contains all of us.
Cogito is committed not only gowing our ability to achieve
sustainability, but also the abilities of our clients, their vendors,
and all of their strategic partners.
Sustainability is always the goal of Cogito Landscape.
Through the phases of Design, Management Planning,
and Implementation Oversight, the following strategies
are used as often as possible:
- Cost Analysis and Budgeting
When people price the construction of a project, they rarely capture the costs associated with maintenance incurred until it is turned over to the end user. Cogito creates detailed budget scenarios, capturing the costs of maintaining the property after construction as well as those incurred in getting it there at a time when they can still be captured. This allows the client to capture expenses that are usually lost and their clients aren’t constantly being asked for more money.
- Local Resource and Vendor Development
Cogito values everyone involved with your project as a resource. With the development of communication systems, to the training of project managers, sales support, vendor development, and end-user education, we realize that to build a sustainable community the most valuable resource you have is the community itself.
- Community Outreach and Education
Cogito creates detailed care instructions and guides to the products and vendors needed to care for each property they help create. You and your clients can access them through a personalized web page custom created for each project we do. You can also post questions at anytime and one of our associates will answer them personally.
- Use and Protection of Native Species
Cogito performs detailed botanical assessments of all their projects and develops plant and material pallets to enhance and protect the nature of each site. Cogito also creates detailed management plans for forests, meadows, and wetlands to eliminate exotic invasive species and restore the natural habitat. This can result in a reduction of maintenance expenses by as much as 80 percent upon completion.
- Soil and Water Best Management Practices
Soil and water conservation is at the heart of what Cogito does, for without both nothing else we do can succeed. Our soil preparation, seed mixes, and erosion control solution can not only protect soil from erosion but also restore it through the use of vermiculture-based soil preparation.
- Vermiculture Based Soil Preparation
Vermiculture based soil preparation uses worm casting and organic amendments to literally add life to soil that is technically dead. By repairing the subsoil brought to the surface during construction, Cogito eliminates the need for hauling thousands of tons of topsoil off our farms where it is needed. By using the heavier subsoils as a base, we also reduce the amount of silt and nitrogen runoff and create a growing medium that improves over time, requiring less fertilizers and providing better results.
- Integrated Pest Management
Integrated pest management starts with the design process and is focused on preventing problems before they happen. In keeping with everything Cogito does, IPM is also about making educated decisions when problems do occur. Rather than automatic and timed applications of toxic chemicals, IPM requires analyzing the diseases and insects to see if they might be beneficial and if the plants can overcome them independently. This reduces the need for chemicals and actually helps build up resistance to the problems naturally.
- Organic Fertilizers, Pest and Disease Control
Organic fertilizers, pests and disease control is essential to the Cogito Method. Too often vendors don’t want to use these products simply because they don’t know where to find them. Cogito creates a detailed resource list for their clients not only calling out the products, but also where to buy them whether they are a homeowner or a commercial vendor. Bringing these people together is just one more way to Grow the People that Grow the Places.
