Looking Forward to Spring?

The mercury is dropping, you’re spending more time indoors, and you always have an ear to the radio to know whether you need to season your front steps along with your soup. Enough with the winter. Who’s ready for Spring? We don’t have a time machine to get you there faster. But perhaps a discussion on spring preparation for your landscaping will warm you up a little. So today, we’ll share what you can do for your landscape in the coming weeks to prepare for Spring which, believe it or not, will come to your Augusta yard sooner than it feels like right now!

Flower Beds

When you think of Spring, you picture flowers! In fact, flowers seem to be the universally accepted yet somehow unofficial symbol of that happy season. Flowers aren’t budding yet, but there’s much to do in the coming months to ensure their health.

Pre-emergents

We talked about the purpose of preemergents in your flowerbeds last week, so this will be a brief review. Now is the time to start spreading preemergent weed prevention around your perennials so that those weeds won’t get a chance to compete. Just don’t put them where you have buds you want to emerge!

Mulch

Hard to believe, but we are less than a month away from the first sign that Spring is coming - mulching! In February, Divine starts mulching around flower beds and trees, so the weeds don’t get a foothold before your flowers do. You can think about it as setting the stage before the diva comes on to sing her aria.

Cleanups and Maintenance

Bed cleanups are something we do all year, but they’re also part of spring prep. Now we’re removing dead plants and preparing your beds for the first blooms. In March, we’ll get into flower bed maintenance which means you may actually have something growing. That’s something to look forward to!

New Flowers

Once April gets here, it’s Spring, and we move on to the new stuff! It’s time to plant annuals in your flower gardens. We’ll get you set up for them and help you to maintain them throughout the Spring and summer.

Lawn

The hum of the lawnmower might be the soundtrack to summer, but it begins in the Spring. In March, depending on the weather, we start weekly mowing! Once April comes around, we’ll have a good idea of how your lawn did over the winter, and we’ll begin all the spring treatments like lawn preemergents and pest prevention. We’ll also start aerating and overseeding the yard to undo any damage that winter caused by compacting soil and killing grass.

Trees and Shrubs

We’ve talked about the importance of tree care all winter. We’ve been trimming to keep them healthy so that their cores can retain energy. All that care will continue in the following months, and when Spring comes along, we’ll add in shrub trimming and pruning.

Spring Cleanup

The winter can be hard on your yard. We’ve alluded to the need to aerate your lawn and reseed it to potentially replace some grass that hasn’t survived. But part of spring prep is also cleanup from the winter. Over the course of these cold months, we currently find ourselves in the middle of much damage that can occur to our plants. Some plants don’t survive the winter. Others leave branches, leaves, and other debris in the cold. Before Spring begins, we will need to spend some time cleaning up all the plant debris and plants that didn’t survive the winter.

Irrigation

And lastly, part of spring prep is getting your irrigation going again! If you have an irrigation system, you already know how beneficial they are to your schedule, landscape and budget. But before the winter began, we winterized your irrigation system and shut it down for several months to keep it safe. Irrigation startup is a relatively straightforward process but is more than just flipping a switch. We need to ensure that the winter doesn’t damage your system and be there when it starts again to fix any problems or make any repairs.

Spring Prep Will Be Divine

We’re not there yet, but as you sip your hot beverage under a cozy blanket, we hope this list of spring prep tasks has given you the hope you need to get through the next few chilly months - and maybe realize that Spring and the new beauty and life it bring aren’t as far off as they seem!