Brandon’s estbalished neighborhoods have a character that’s easy to recognize – mature oak trees shading the trees, estbalished landscaping surrounding homes, and green spaces and retention ponds woven throughout the community. Places like Bloomingdale and Providence Lakes have decades to grow into the neighborhoods they are today, and that mature landscape is part of what homeowners love about living there. It also creates plenty of shade, moisture, and shelter that ants can take advantage of around the property.
Decades of Landscaping, Built-In Moisture
Many Brandon subdivisions use storm water retention systems, so ponds, swales, and low drainage areas run throughout residential communities. Add a neighborhood that’s been maturing since the ’90s or early 2000s – mulch beds refreshed year after year, shrubs and groundcover grown in thick, and tree canopy providing shade that keeps soil from drying out – and you’ve got a yard with plenty of moisture and cover close to the house.
None of this is a knock on the landscaping. Mature trees and a well-kept HAO common area are exactly what make these neighborhoods desirable. But that same maturity means maturity means more estbalished root systems, more leaf litter, more shaded and undistrubed ground close to the house – all conditions that can give ants more places to shelter and move around without being noticed until a trail shows up on the kitchen counter.
Newer construction in Brandon doesn’t skip this entirely – fresh irrigation and young landscaping still create moisture – but it usually takes a few years for a yard to develop the kind of dense, estbalished cover that gives ants more places to move around the property. In an older, fully grown-in neighborhood, that cover has often been developing for decades.
