Spring Landscape Cleanup
After preparing your gardens for the growing season, it is time to also prepare your general landscape. It doesn’t take much effort to get your whole landscape healthy and ready for summer. Each spring, do a quick check of maintenance needs. This checklist will get you started:
Evaluate the lawn and apply a light dose of fertilizer. Repair any thin or dead spots and watch for crabgrass sneaking in. See Spring Lawn Care for detailed care instructions.
Rake dry and matted grass when the soil has thawed and dried.
Tree pruning is best performed when trees are dormant, but dead, broken or diseased branches should be removed when noted.
Deciduous shrubs and summer flowering shrubs should be pruned very early, ideally when dormant or before growth begins. Check Pruning Shrubs for the best time to trim yours.
Remove any plants and shrubs that died over winter.
Fertilize trees and shrubs with fertilizer spikes or slow release granular fertilizer.
If you installed critter protection around tree trunks it can be removed after the snow melts.
Once you have all your plant life cleaned up and growing, don’t forget a thorough inspection of all your hardscaping and exterior finishes. Evaluate the maintenance needs and prioritize the work, you do have all summer to spruce things up if necessary. And thankfully hardscape maintenance is not a constant need!
Tune up the lawn mower
Adjust sprinkler heads
Before you haul out your deck furniture, clean and re-stain or seal the wood if necessary. This can be done instead in fall, but it is nice to enjoy the completed work all summer.
Inspect pavers and brick edgers for heaved or sunken bricks or pavers and refresh the joint sand or gravel.
Refresh gravel in pathways
Replace bulbs and/or batteries on pathway lights
Inspect fences and gates for necessary repairs or maintenance
If you tend to these items quickly in spring, you have all summer to relax or work in the gardens!