For a garden to look beautiful, it takes planning time beforehand, a great garden doesn’t just happen. With the end to winter in sight, it’s time to start thinking about spring, and how you want the garden to look. With that in mind, here are a few tips on how to best prepare your spring garden.
Choose colours
With a little forethought, you can not only plan out your spring garden, but also the colour scheme for the other three seasons as well, done entirely with bulbs. The best part about this is, if thought out carefully, many bulbs will naturalize, meaning you won’t have to replace them every year. A great winter bulb is the flowering onion (Allium), a bright ball of vivid purple that blooms from late summer through to the frost.
Revitalise your lawn
Even the most picturesque garden can look dour if the grass around it is brown and dead. That’s why it’s important to properly prepare your lawn for spring. That means removing dead growth, which helps brings light and air to the soil level. After that, reseed bare patches of lawn and keep it well watered until the new grass comes out.
Prepare the soil
Even if the weather is warm enough, that doesn’t mean you can just go out and start planting to your hearts content. First, you have to make sure the soil is actually ready, as digging in very wet soil can damage its structure and cause long term harm. To determine whether or not the soil has the correct moisture content, it’s as simple as lightly squeezing a handful of soil into a ball, then dropping it. If it doesn’t break up when it hits the ground, then it’s probably still too early to dig. Preparation should only start after the soil is dry enough.
Do odd jobs
It may be cold outside, but it’s also the perfect time to prune, turn over the top soil, create a rock garden, fix fences, or any other nagging job that you haven’t gotten around to. Even better if you’ve got some good hand tools around. Investing in a set of garden tools will make your life much easier when it comes to general garden maintenance.
Create a composting area
If you haven’t already, set up a compost area in your garden. This can be as easy as a ready-made compost bin you get from the local hardware store, or, even better, a compost bin you build yourself. Not only does this give you somewhere to put your garden waste, but it will also help your growing plants by providing rich nutrients
Gardening in the spring is a great way to get out in the sun and be in nature. With a little planning, the perfect spring garden is just around the corner.
Image by Karen Roe used under the Creative Commons license.
