A yard on your property can serve several purposes. Whether you use your yard as a place to pass time and relax, or you just enjoy gardening as an activity, it’s very important to maintain quality landscaping in your yard. Landscaping might seem like a pretty straightforward activity from the outside, but behind all the beauty there are hours and hours of adding walls and tracing paths made of stones. Therefore, in order to help you get going, we’ve put together a little guide about the best landscaping practices you can apply.
The Lawn
The most important and maybe the most obvious aspect when it comes to landscaping, is mowing your lawn. A well-maintained lawn is the first thing people notice whenever they are around your home, so it’s only normal for it to have priority. The thing with perfect maintenance is that it can be a different process depending on the type of lawn you have. But generally speaking, there are some basic guidelines that you need to start with:
- Never cut the grass too short, as this activity doesn’t encourage healthy growth
- Fertilize your lawn in mid-spring
- When the weather is very hot in the summer, avoid mowing
- Pull out the weeds as often as you can
The Trees
When creating the perfect landscape, it is crucial to pay attention to trees; that is if you have any. And if you don’t, you might want to start planting some, as they are the key to creating a perfect landscape. Just like it is with mowing, there are some guidelines that one should be aware of. On one side, during spring, it is very important to take care of trimming the suckers, the mulch and the dead branches around the trees. On the other side, during the summer, you need to always watch out for insect infestation. And of course, as the fall comes, try to rake up fallen leaves on a regular basis.
The Flowers
Flowers around the garden are an element that really brings everything to life and helps you put together an amazing landscape. You might want to start by picking a color scheme if you want to go all the way, or you can choose to have all sorts of colored flowers in your garden.
There are two types of flowers that you can grow in your garden: annual flowers and perennial ones. You can go ahead and plant the perennial ones even in the fall, but you’ll have to wait until spring in order to start planting the annual ones. Here are some other ground rules when it comes to taking care of flowers:
- Make sure to water flowers very carefully during the growing season
- Pluck the dead flowers on your plants as soon as they start fading
- If the perennial flowers’ leaves start turning yellow, you have to cut the plant all the way to the ground, meaning that the plant is dying for the year
- Protect the perennial flowers with a layer of mulch during winter
- Pull up the annual flowers when they start fading
Find Inspiration
There is no standard for landscaping when it comes to one’s yard. Everybody has different needs, so that’s what you should think about when you decide to turn to landscaping. What you need to ask yourself, is what are you going to actually use your outside space for? Is there going to be a pool? A place for reading? A little terrace where you can invite friends over during summer nights? Maybe you can discuss this matter with other family members and ask them what would they use the space for; that’s how you can come up with a workable plan.
It’s crucial to have some sort of plan when you start, because it’s hard to place a pool in your backyard if you’ve already started to grow some trees in that exact spot. Find some inspiration online, look up other people’s ideas of landscaping and start creating your own.
Whether you’re just starting to work on your landscape and you want to build a garden from scratch, or you just need to make some improvements, following these tips can get you a long way.
Having an aesthetically pleasing landscape can get you a long way, especially if it matches the theme of your house. Maintaining a quality landscape in your yard is definitely not an easy process, as it takes physical work, researching and equipment. More so, if you want to do it in a professional manner, all by yourself, you’ll end up investing a good amount of money in this project. But at the end of the day, when it will all turn out fantastic, it’s going to be worth it, and you might even enjoy it and make it a hobby.
