4 Tips to Enhance Your Landscape

It’s the moment landscapes (and people!) have been waiting for. Spring is here, and along with it comes the promise of bright blooms and new growth. However, to fully realize its warm weather potential, your community’s landscape needs a proper spring spruce up. Here’s how to supercharge the effort and usher in your best curb appeal yet.

Clean-Up Your Act

Out with the old and in with the new! Now is the time for your landscape provider to remove fallen leaves, branches, and damaged plant material. Ornamental grasses, perennials, and groundcover could also use a haircut before its new growth emerges. The same goes for summer blooming vines and shrubs, like roses and trumpet vine, and evergreens, like boxwoods.

Before putting down new mulch (more on that in a moment), take a look at your edging. If planting beds or lawn areas look like they could use a cleaner border, now is the time to do it. Refreshing your edging in the spring before adding new mulch will keep it in the intended location and prevent grass from coloring outside the lines during the active growing season.

Apply Pre-Emergent Pre-Mulch

Here’s another thing to consider before mulch: your weed-abatement strategy. This one step could make a huge difference in how many pesky invaders you see this spring. The trick is asking your landscape provider to apply a pre-emergent herbicide, which prevents weed seeds from germinating. Do this after cleaning-up winter debris, but before adding a new layer of mulch.

While this will boost the efficacy of your application, it unfortunately won’t stop every kind of weed, nor will it help with those that have already started to grow. For existing weeds, your landscape provider should apply a post-emergent herbicide and hand pull as needed, especially before they mature enough to go to seed.

Feed Your Plants

Not all plants require additional nutrients. Native plants, for example, typically don’t need fertilizer once they’re established. Newly installed and young plants, however, could use a boost. The best time to do this is (you guessed it) before adding a new layer of mulch. We also recommend giving a little love to ornamental flowering shrubs, like roses, azalea and hydrangea, too. A slow-release fertilizer that’s not too high in nitrogen is best. And for heavy feeders, like those roses, an additional application may be needed in a couple months.

Finally, Mulch

And now it’s time to add that mulch. Mulch is landscape’s magic multi-tasker. It suppresses weeds, regulates soil temperature, controls erosion, protects trees from mowers and edgers, and just looks nice.

The general rule of thumb for mulch application is to achieve a thickness of 1 to 2 inches. Here’s the good news: you don’t need to apply 2 inches of new mulch every spring. You simply need to augment what’s already there to bring it back to the correct depth.