Home Landscape Design--Maintenance
By: S.V. Scott, Master Gardener

As the hot, humid days of summer begin to pile on, our thoughts about gardening can quickly change from eager enthusiasm for creative change, to a dogged determination to simply endure. Maintenance is the key to making a garden pleasant during the challenging months of summer.

Inside or out, no place can look it’s best when it’s dirty or neglected. What shining floors, polished tabletops, and sparkling windows are to the inside of a house; mowing, trimming, and weeding are to the outside. Whether designing a new landscape or refining an existing one, think critically about the maintenance chores your design will require, and eliminate the need for those that are most arduous.

For example, mulching helps to control weeds, and using compost and mulch together keeps the soil loose and friable, so that any weeds that do sprout are easily pulled out by the roots. A loose, fertile soil will support more and healthier plants, and densely planted beds leave little room for sprouting weeds. Large ornamental beds and borders, thickly planted, that get a top dressing of compost and mulch every year, are much easier to maintain that isolated clumps of flowers and shrubs, and there’s not as much worry about mowing over some treasured plant by accident.

Mulch around trees to a convenient mow-line to eliminate the need to weed-eat close to vulnerable tissue, and trim tree branches high enough that an average adult can comfortable walk beneath them.

Give beds a crisply delineated edge with vinyl, metal, wood, brick, or block, and install it so that the lawn mower will easily roll over it, again helping eliminate the need to trim. If you can’t easily find an edging material that you like and can afford, use a power edger regularly, and a thick layer of mulch. If you still have to do some line trimming, do it before you mow, so that it can go through the mower along with the other clippings.

If you give some thought to the ways in which you will work in the garden, then routine maintenance can become a positive pleasure instead of an onerous chore. With an easy, practical plan of up-keep, your property can have that extra gloss that only love, or a first-rate lawn care company, can give.