Maintenance is an important component of restoration projects. Sometimes your maintenance needs are obvious. For example, you may need to irrigate or fertilize your plantings, or continue to remove exotic species from your site for as long as it takes to establish a healthy native plant community. Some maintenance needs aren't known in advance and scheduled visits are necessary to determine if your project is functioning as planned. Few restoration projects will succeed as planned if they are treated once and never re-visited.

Dave Polster
Repair work should be undertaken in a timely manner. Prompt repair helps to ensure that the project goals will be met.

You can assume that you will need to return to the site on a yearly basis to check on its progress, at least in the initial years. These visits can be a simple walk-through to make sure everything is still intact and looks as it should. You'll find there is usually something that needs 'tweaking' before a project is quite right, and this may not be evident at the outset. In fact, it may not be evident for years. Hence you should try to budget for maintenance needs whether they are obvious or not. One suggestion is to set aside a percentage of the budget (e.g., 10%) for unexpected future maintenance needs.