Everyone loves new beginnings, and the start of the new year is an excellent time for them. But while how you start matters, success comes from the little choices we make every day. That’s true for hitting your new years resolutions, having good relationships, succeeding at your job, and nearly everything else that matters to you.

While designing and building a new garden can be a joyful and creative process, garden bed maintenance separates gorgeous gardens from mediocre ones. So what can you do to maintain the beauty you start with in your garden? Here are Mulhern’s Top Tips for Keeping Up with Your St. Peach Beach Flower Beds.

Watch Carefully

Our first tip may seem apparent, but that’s why it’s first! Also, sometimes we need to be reminded about things we already know; otherwise, self-help gurus would not be a thing, and you’d never need to write a checklist.

Your mission as your garden’s caretaker is the same as that of a mall security guard – observe and report! Watch for changes in your garden because you can’t help what you don’t see. When you hire Mulhern, we’ll be doing the same, along with everything else on this list.

Mulching Again?

We talk about mulch a lot, but there’s a reason for that! Mulch is one of the best tools for garden upkeep. When you keep up with your mulch, it keeps up with your garden.

Generally, you can get by with mulching about twice a year. This is because organic mulch breaks down and feeds the soil, which is a good thing. But when it does, it’s news to be replaced so that you maintain all the other positive attributes of your mulch – water retention, insulation, weed blocking, and beautification.

Edging

Like mulching, edging is a small time investment in garden bed maintenance that pays enormous dividends. Creating an edge around your garden makes it looks better and reminds you where the borders start. But more than that, edging is a barrier.

The indentation of the edge around your garden creates a barrier that makes it more difficult for weeds to get through. It also helps keep desirable plants, like grass, where they are most desirable.

Pruning

Your flowers are constantly growing and going through their life cycles. As they do, they are shedding leaves, petals, and other plant debris. In addition, the other plants in your yard (not to mention those past your property borders) are also shed, and since plants aren’t great at respecting boundaries, all those leaves can land in your garden beds.

Planting

Although plant installation is its own thing, it’s also part of garden bed maintenance. Flowers die and need to be replaced. Sometimes as plants grow, they change shape. Sometimes you want a new look!

Regardless of what changes your garden experiences, you may want to add new plants into the mix from time to time.

Clean Up

Technically, much of what we’ve already referred to here can fall under cleanup. But cleanup is also a seasonal task that landscapers do in yards and garden beds in spring and fall. It involves pruning, mulching, and especially removing dead plants and dead plant debris.

Cut Backs – Garden Bed Maintenance – Extreme Pruning Edition

Perennials are around all year, but some perennials have cycles of blooming and dormancy. When perennials go dormant, especially in cooler climates, sometimes the best thing for them is cutting them back.

Perennial cutbacks involve cutting the flower so only a bit sticks out of the ground. It allows the plant’s energy to feed its core during the season when it’s not blooming. The part left above the ground keeps the roots from freezing in cold weather.

Weeding

Australian folk rock band, The Waifs once sang, “Every time you water the garden.
You also water the weeds.” Well, put. It isn’t easy to have an entirely weed-free garden, which is why part of garden bed maintenance is weeding.

Using the other methods we described will do a lot to limit the growth of weeds in your flower garden, but there are always a few tough ones who make it through the mulch and edge barriers! We remove weeds as part of garden bed maintenance.

Beautiful Gardens Without the Fuss

We all love to have a beautifully landscaped yard with flower gardens and other beautiful features. But keeping up with the gardens can take a lot of time, and you may already struggle to keep your New Year’s Resolutions!

When you hire Mulhern, we maintain your landscape so you can focus on the rest of your life. Give us a call!