Lawn Care & Landscaping in Marble Falls, TX

Marble Falls, Texas sits at the heart of the Highland Lakes region, where the Colorado River winds through the Texas Hill Country and creates some of the most scenic landscapes in Central Texas. Lawn care and landscaping in Marble Falls requires a different approach than the Austin metro — the rocky, shallow soils, dramatic terrain changes, and lakefront properties all demand specialized expertise.

Grass Works has been serving Marble Falls and the surrounding Burnet County communities since our founding in 2007. We understand the challenges of maintaining lawns and landscapes in the Hill Country environment, from managing erosion on sloped properties to selecting plants that thrive in the thin, rocky soils common throughout the Highland Lakes area.

Our Marble Falls services include lawn care and maintenance, landscape design and installation, and licensed irrigation services. We also serve nearby communities including Horseshoe Bay, Burnet, Llano, and Kingsland.

Marble Falls sits where granite meets limestone

Marble Falls is one of the few places in Central Texas where a soil test is genuinely worth paying for. The town straddles the eastern edge of the Llano Uplift, the ancient granite dome that surfaces at Granite Mountain on the west side of town, and it also sits on the Marble Falls limestone that gives the area its name. The result is that soil chemistry changes over short distances. A lot on the granite side gives you coarse, sandy, fast-draining decomposed granite that runs near neutral or slightly acidic. A lot on the limestone side gives you thin, alkaline, limey soil over rock. Two houses a mile apart can need opposite treatments.

That distinction is not academic. On alkaline limestone soil, yellowing St. Augustine is usually iron chlorosis, and chelated iron fixes it. On granitic sand the same yellowing is far more likely to be simple nutrient loss, because sand holds neither water nor fertiliser for long, and the answer is lighter feeding more often rather than iron. Treating one as the other wastes a season. If you have never had the soil tested, that is the first thing to do in Marble Falls, and it costs less than one round of the wrong product.

Marble Falls watering rules changed in June 2026

The City of Marble Falls moved from Stage 3 to Stage 2 restrictions on 18 June 2026, following completion of water system upgrades. Under Stage 2, landscaped areas may be watered no more than once per week, between midnight and 10 a.m. or between 7 p.m. and midnight. Days are assigned by address and by method: odd-numbered residences use spray irrigation on Wednesday and hose-end watering on Saturday, even-numbered residences use spray irrigation on Thursday and hose-end on Sunday. Odd-numbered commercial properties and schools water Friday, even-numbered Tuesday. Automatic systems, hose-end sprinklers and soaker hoses all count. Stages here have changed more than once in recent years, so confirm the current one with the city before reprogramming.

Grass, and a colder winter than Austin’s

On fast-draining granite sand under a once-weekly allowance, Bermuda and zoysia are the practical choices. Bermuda in particular tolerates sandy soil and deep watering intervals better than anything else grown here. St. Augustine is a difficult proposition on the granite side of town: it wants consistent moisture, and sand does not supply it between weekly cycles.

The Highland Lakes also run a little colder than Austin. Marble Falls sees more nights below freezing in a typical winter, and warm-season grasses here go dormant earlier in autumn and green up later in spring, often well into April. That shifts the calendar. Pre-emergent still goes down in late February before soil temperatures reach the mid-sixties, but the first spring fertiliser application should wait for real green-up rather than a warm week in March, and new sod laid in early spring will sit and sulk longer here than it would in town.

Making a weekly cycle work on sand

Sandy granite soil takes water quickly but holds very little of it, which means long single runs mostly push water below the root zone where the grass cannot reach it. Shorter, well-timed cycles inside the permitted window, plus compost top dressing to raise the soil’s water-holding capacity, do more than any change in irrigation volume. Mow high and leave clippings on the lawn: on sand, the organic matter returned by mulching mowing is not a marginal benefit, it is a substantial part of what makes the soil hold anything at all.

Where we work in Marble Falls

Grass Works maintains properties in Marble Falls and the surrounding Highland Lakes area including Gregg Ranch, Meadowlakes, Wildflower Estates, Los Escondidos, Blue Lake Estates and the downtown and lakefront districts, along with vacation rental properties and commercial sites along US 281.

Four different rocks crop out within a few miles of town

Burnet County’s mapped surface geology includes Town Mountain Granite (Precambrian), Marble Falls Limestone (Pennsylvanian), Valley Spring Gneiss and Packsaddle Schist (both Precambrian), and Cretaceous Walnut Clay. Granite Mountain, the pink granite dome that supplied the stone for the Texas State Capitol, sits about a mile west of town. The falls the city is named for were limestone ledges in the Colorado River, mistaken for marble, submerged when Max Starcke Dam was completed in 1951.

The soils that weather off those rocks behave in opposite ways. The granitic and metamorphic series — Click, Keese, Lou, Castell and Voca among them — are sandy loams, well drained, with moderately rapid permeability and reactions running moderately acid to neutral. Keese in particular is only ten to twenty inches deep to bedrock. The limestone-derived series on the other side of town tell a starker story: NRCS rates available water capacity for Tarpley, Purves, Hensley, Brackett and Eckrant as very low, between 0.9 and 2.9 inches through the entire profile, over bedrock at four to twenty inches. Deeper sandy units in the county hold two to three times as much.

That is why we push soil testing harder in Marble Falls than anywhere else we work. Two properties a mile apart can have opposite pH, opposite drainage and opposite fertility problems, and the standard Central Texas programme will be right for one and wrong for the other. A test through the Texas A&M soil lab costs less than one round of the wrong product.

Feeding sand is a different job from feeding clay

On the granitic side, the limiting factor is retention, not fertility. Coarse sandy soil holds little water and little nutrient, so anything soluble moves down past the root zone with the next heavy rain or long irrigation cycle. Texas A&M AgriLife is direct about the consequence: smaller, more frequent nitrogen applications are needed on sandy soils when quickly available sources are used, with slow-release products preferred or light rates of half a pound of nitrogen per 1,000 square feet or less per application, specifically to limit leaching toward groundwater.

Annual nitrogen budgets by species run roughly two to five pounds per 1,000 square feet for common Bermuda, one to four for St. Augustine and zoysia, and zero to three for buffalograss, where heavy feeding is not recommended at all. Long, infrequent single runs are counterproductive on sand for the same reason — water pushed below the root zone is water the grass never sees. Shorter, better-timed cycles inside the permitted window, plus compost topdressing to raise water-holding capacity, do far more than increasing volume. Mulching mowing matters more here than in town: on sand, the organic matter returned by leaving clippings is a meaningful share of what makes the soil hold anything.

A half-zone colder than Austin, and what that does to the calendar

Under the 2023 USDA map, Marble Falls falls in Zone 8b, an average annual minimum of 15 to 20 degrees, while Austin sits in Zone 9a at 20 to 25. That half-zone is not trivial for warm-season turf. Dormancy starts earlier in autumn and breaks later in spring, and full green-up here regularly runs into late April when Austin lawns are already growing.

AgriLife keys fertiliser timing to frost rather than to the calendar: the first spring nitrogen goes down only after the grass has greened up and been mowed several times, typically four to eight weeks after the last frost, and the final autumn application no later than six weeks before the expected first frost. Applied to Highland Lakes dates, both ends of that window shift relative to Austin. The practical error we see most often in Marble Falls is spring fertiliser applied on a warm March week, feeding winter weeds on turf that has not yet broken dormancy. Pre-emergent still goes down when soil temperatures hold in the mid-fifties for four or five consecutive days, and again around 70 degrees in early autumn.

The restrictions are about the water plant, not the lakes

Marble Falls moved from Stage 3 to Stage 2 in June 2026, and the stated reason was completion of city water system upgrades — not rainfall. That distinction matters for planning. As of mid-2026 Lakes Buchanan and Travis were near full and LCRA classified its water supply condition as normal, having gone from 51 percent to over 90 percent of combined capacity in a matter of days during the July 2025 flooding. Local restrictions in the Highland Lakes have lately tracked treatment and distribution capacity more closely than reservoir storage.

Under Stage 2, watering is limited to once per week between midnight and 10 a.m. or 7 p.m. and midnight, with days split by address and by method: odd-numbered homes use spray irrigation on Wednesday and hose-end watering on Saturday, even-numbered homes use spray on Thursday and hose-end on Sunday. Odd-numbered commercial properties and schools water Friday, even-numbered Tuesday. Automatic systems, hose-end sprinklers and soaker hoses all count against the allowance. Stage 3, if the city returns to it, narrows the window to evening and overnight only. Stages here have changed more than once in recent years, so confirm the current one with the city before reprogramming anything.

What actually damages Marble Falls lawns

The local geology changes the diagnosis, and this is where generic advice does real harm. Iron chlorosis — pale grass with green veins — is tied to high pH, and AgriLife puts the threshold at roughly pH above 7.5. On the limestone side of Marble Falls that is the likely explanation and chelated iron is the right response. On the granitic side, where soil runs moderately acid to neutral, the same symptom is far more likely to be nitrogen simply leached out of a sandy profile, and iron will not fix it.

Take-all root rot carries the same twist. The fungus favours alkaline soil, and AgriLife’s standard remedy is to acidify with sulfur at three to five pounds per 1,000 square feet a year or sphagnum peat moss at one to two bales. On soil already sitting between pH 5.6 and 6.5, that step is unnecessary and potentially harmful. The symptoms to look for are irregular thinning patches, yellowing foliage, and short, blackened, rotten roots with stolons that lift easily from the ground, showing in spring and early summer as the turf breaks dormancy.

Large patch is the autumn and spring disease, producing circular patches with yellow-orange borders where diseased shoots pull easily from stolons that stay green and roots that stay white. Preventative fungicide belongs in autumn when soil temperatures fall between 50 and 70 degrees. Chinch bugs take hot, sunny, dry ground in summer; the treatment threshold is around 25 per square foot, confirmed by flotation test, and the tell is grass that does not respond to water or fertiliser. White grubs justify treatment above five to ten per square foot, with preventative products timed after beetle flights end. Grey leaf spot appears after warm wet spells as tan or grey oblong lesions with purple to brown margins, and is managed by cutting soluble nitrogen and bagging clippings rather than by spraying.

Choosing a grass for fast-draining ground

On granitic sand under a once-weekly allowance, Bermuda and zoysia are the practical choices. Bermuda is rated very good to excellent for drought tolerance and mows at one to two inches, though its shade tolerance is very low. Zoysia is very good on drought, moderate to high on shade, and mows anywhere from half an inch to two. St. Augustine has the best shade tolerance of the warm-season grasses and mows at two and a half to three inches, but it is the thirstiest option and sand is the least forgiving soil to carry it on.

Buffalograss is worth ruling out explicitly, because it gets recommended here on drought-tolerance grounds. It performs best where annual rainfall is 25 inches or less; the Llano Uplift receives roughly 27 to 33. On that rainfall it tends to be outcompeted rather than thriving, and it will not take traffic. Whatever the species, never remove more than a third of the leaf blade in a single cut, and keep the blade sharp.

Tree rules, short-term rentals and burn bans

Marble Falls regulates tree preservation and landscaping through Article 9 of its development code, covering tree preservation minimums and general landscape requirements. The city publishes the code but not a plain-language summary, so confirm protected sizes, species and permit requirements with Development Services before removing anything substantial — particularly on a lot being developed or redeveloped, where preservation minimums are most likely to bite.

The city also runs a short-term rental registration programme, which matters here because a large share of Highland Lakes property is rented rather than owner-occupied and exterior upkeep is part of what keeps a listing viable. We handle a good deal of vacation rental maintenance in the area on standing schedules for exactly that reason: an absent owner does not notice a broken sprinkler head in July, and guests do.

On disposal, the city handles trash and brush through its contracted hauler and has added free monthly brush pickup to its solid waste contract — check the current collection calendar for your set-out day and limits. Burning is usually not an option: Burnet County is under a burn ban for much of most years, set by the Commissioners Court, and the Texas A&M Forest Service maintains the official statewide burn ban map. Bans here change quickly — Burnet County lifted one in April 2026 that had run since February — so check before, not after.