Program Information
Landscape & Grounds
The Grounds Maintenance team is committed to providing safe, sustainable, and aesthetically pleasing outdoor spaces for the UCSF community. Our team provides landscape and grounds services across UCSF Campus and Health locations, maintaining trees, shrubs, groundcover, planting areas, hardscape, streetscape, and other exterior spaces.
Our staff works to keep UCSF’s outdoor environments clean, safe, functional, and welcoming while continuously improving the long-term health, sustainability, and resilience of our landscapes.
Service Information
Covered Services effective July 1st, 2025:
Topic | Description |
|---|
Landscape & Grounds | - General landscape maintenance such as greenery
- General hardscape maintenance such as trash, debris clean up, and tripping hazards
- General streetscape maintenance such as litter pick up and tripping hazards
- Roads and walkway repairs
- Irrigation maintenance/shutdown
- Tree care emergency response
- Tree care general maintenance on 3 to 6 years recurring annual plan
- General plants healthcare such as fertilization, insect and disease control
- Sharp pick up outside of buildings
- Graffiti removal
- High clean of organic spill such as feces and vomits
- Special event preparation and cleanup
- ADA ramp repairs
- Trip and fall request
- Road pothole
- Outside signages
|
Sustainability & Biodiversity
Sustainability is integrated into how we manage UCSF landscapes. Our approach promotes biodiversity, water-wise landscape management, healthy soils, and the principle of selecting the right plant for the right place. We prioritize plants that are well adapted to each site’s conditions, climate, water needs, and intended use, creating landscapes that are attractive, functional, and resilient.
Water conservation is an important part of our landscape management strategy. Through efficient irrigation practices, water-wise plant selection, and ongoing improvements to our landscapes and irrigation systems, we work to provide plants with the water they need while reducing unnecessary water use.
Plant selection is also an important part of our Integrated Pest Management approach. When a plant experiences significant or recurring pest or disease problems, we prioritize replacing it with a more appropriate and resilient species rather than relying on repeated pesticide or fungicide applications. This approach supports our commitment to reducing pesticide use and aligns with UCSF Grounds’ practice of maintaining campus landscapes without herbicides since 2008.
Since 2008, UCSF Grounds has eliminated the use of herbicides, including products such as Roundup, in our campus landscape maintenance. Instead, our team uses alternative weed-management practices, including steam, thermal, mechanical, and manual methods.
Mount Sutro Vegetation Management
The Grounds team manages UCSF’s Mount Sutro Open Space Reserve and is responsible for implementing its Vegetation Management Plan. This work supports the long-term health and resilience of the urban forest while balancing fire safety, ecological stewardship, biodiversity, and public use.
As part of this responsibility, Grounds manages vegetation and fuel reduction activities and maintains required defensible space around UCSF facilities and other priority areas. This work is coordinated with appropriate UCSF specialists and external agencies to support fire prevention, environmental requirements, and responsible management of the Reserve.
Safety & Risk Management
Safety and risk management are fundamental responsibilities of the Grounds program. Across UCSF Campus and Health locations, our team proactively identifies and addresses exterior conditions that could create risks for patients, staff, students, visitors, and the surrounding community.
This includes ongoing tree risk assessment and management, monitoring tree health and structural conditions, and identifying potential hazards before they become larger concerns. Grounds also monitors exterior walking surfaces and hardscape for tripping hazards and other safety conditions, coordinating repairs and corrective actions with UCSF teams and local jurisdictions when appropriate.
Through preventive maintenance, regular inspections, tree management, and proactive identification of exterior hazards, Grounds helps maintain safe and accessible outdoor environments throughout UCSF.
Our Approach
Through thoughtful plant selection, efficient irrigation, responsible pest management, proactive risk management, and sustainable landscape and vegetation management, UCSF Grounds works to protect our community, conserve resources, support biodiversity, and maintain healthy and resilient outdoor spaces across UCSF
