The upkeep of a landscape requires a significant amount of effort and time. It can be a lot of work, even if you’re simply attempting to keep up with the bare minimum. This is because landscapes do not support themselves. 

Additionally, there are always duties that need to be done because they are constantly developing and evolving. Maintenance goes beyond simple upkeep; it’s about fostering growth and maximizing the potential of your landscape. 

Here are some important items to include on your checklist for maintaining your landscaping:

Prune your shrubs

This practice involves cutting out dead or extra brushes from the shrubs on your landscape. You can modify the size and shape of shrubs as they begin to fill out to increase the number of blooms or berries they produce. 

Pruning is typically best done in the early spring before leaves begin to bud. The exceptions, though, are plants like lilacs and forsythia that develop their blossom buds in the preceding season. Early spring pruning of these shrubs will remove this year’s blossoms.

Mowing

Regular lawn mowing will keep your lawn looking neat, trimmed, and pleasant to the eye. However, keeping your lawn cut short also has the added benefit of deterring pests, who prefer to “hide out” in long grass, like ticks and mosquitoes.

Even though mowing is one of those activities that appears simple to maintain, falling behind by even one week on your usual mowing schedule will be noticeable. Keeping up with it is undoubtedly crucial for your grass’s appearance and health.

Leaf removal

Deciduous trees lose their leaves in the fall and, in some species’ cases, spring. Before they start destroying your lawn and plants, this needs to be cleaned up.  Remove the leaves from your property and clean them up to maintain a tidy area. This is how to keep your garden clean and healthy. Collected leaves can be used for mulching.

It will be a case of “hitting two birds with one stone” to remove the extra leaves and use them as mulch. Removing unwanted leaves and utilizing them for mulch kills two birds with one stone. It also provides a lot of curb appeal and makes your trees, bushes, and flowers stand out.

Water when necessary

It’s also crucial to regularly water your lawn to keep it healthy. You can manually perform this landscape maintenance work by dragging sprinklers around for hours on end. 

But if you really want the most luscious lawn possible, a professional irrigation system will ensure your lawn receives the proper amount of water. The most recent irrigation systems have technologies like weather sensors to prevent overwatering or underwatering of lawns.

Weed control

To save effort and maintain your landscape’s finest appearance, weed prevention and weeding are two essential measures. Weeding cannot be avoided; it is a necessary element of maintaining a landscape.

Naturally, there are a variety of strategies to lessen the need for weeding, such as mulching your garden, covering any exposed soil with ground covers, and maintaining healthy grass. However, weeds will continue to appear on occasion. 

The optimum time to weed them is before they set seed and multiply.

Fertilizing

Regular mowing will keep your lawn well-groomed, but fertilizing it is also necessary to keep it healthy. In addition to enhancing turf color, fertilizer thickens the lawn to lower the likelihood of weed growth. If you live in an area where phosphorus is too high in the soil, 15-0-15 fertilizer will be a great fit for your lawn.

While some homeowners do this on their own using items from the supermarket, you can choose to leave this task to gardening experts or ask for their advice on fertilizer selections. Fertilizer supplies will make your lawn as green as a golf course.

Top-dressing

It is crucial for areas with clay-rich soil to topdress the area in order to strengthen the soil’s structure and supply critical nutrients for grass and plants. Compost can be added as a top dressing to help further build a healthy layer of topsoil. Your lawn will flourish as a result of this.

Aeration

Your lawn needs to breathe, and aerating will help it achieve that. By creating tiny holes all over the grass, core aeration increases the amount of air, water, and nutrients that can reach the soil’s deeper layers. Aeration also aids in reducing soil compaction, allowing for deeper and more firmly formed grass root systems.

As grass plants can better grasp water and nutrient supplies, this translates to greater health. This can result in a greener, thicker lawn. The optimal time to overseed is also during aeration since the improved growth will result from seed-to-soil contact.

Deadhead your flowers

Deadhead perennials, annuals, and flowering shrubs to keep your plants in bloom. This could be as easy as shearing off a large number of deadheads at once, shearing off the spent stems by cutting them down a few inches, or picking off the spent flowers with your hand. The objective is to preserve your garden plants looking well and to get them to bloom once more