Commercial mowing and cleanups in Cumberland, Maine.

Office and retail frontage along Route 1 and Route 9 needs a spring cleanup to clear winter sand and debris from beds and turf edges, and a fall cleanup to get leaves off before snow. HOAs and condominium grounds, which often border woods, collect the most leaves.

Cumberland's Brush Dump on Stiles Way sells commercial passes alongside residential ones and accepts brush, leaves and grass clippings, within its limits of branches under 12 inches across and no stumps. It is open from early April until the weekend before Thanksgiving or the first measurable snow.

Commercial sites on the Foreside near Casco Bay, or near the town's streams, sit partly inside the 250-foot and 75-foot shoreland zones of Chapter 226, which is one more reason to keep fertilizer and clippings controlled at the edges of the lot.

Winter shapes the program too. Cumberland bans parking on public roads from midnight to 7 a.m. between November 15 and April 1, and plow sand and salt build up along lot edges and islands, so the spring cleanup on commercial sites starts by clearing that winter material out of the turf and beds.