Wheeling landscape professional offers tips to 'Spruce Up Your Spring Landscape'
Being outside right now is a welcome respite.
While landscape crews are revving up to help people welcome the season with spring cleanups and plantings, here are some of our pro tips for getting the best start on growing season:
• Do a clean sweep. It might have been a while since you last looked around your yard and garden bed. As you're surveying your surroundings, remove any dead annual plants that might have been left out over the winter. Compost them to add nutrients back to the soil. Clean up any debris, whether it's garbage that's flown into your yard or some leftover outdoor decorations. Take off any tree wrap that you put on trees in the fall to protect them.
• Branch out: Look carefully at trees and shrubs to identify any dead branches and prune accordingly. If you're not sure if a branch is totally dead, call an expert like us. The same thing goes for large limbs that are tougher to remove.
• Mulch for moisture: Top-dress planting beds with shredded hardwood mulch. It not only retains the moisture in the ground, it also acts as a weed barrier and gives your planting beds a fresh look for spring.
• Plan for plantings and landscapes. Start filling spring containers with pansies and other hardy annuals. Think about any new shrubs, trees, perennials or grasses that you'd like to add to your outdoor surroundings once the frost-free date passes in mid-May. Or maybe this is the year you go for the new patio or outdoor fireplace you've been talking about.
Enjoy the extra daylight, warmer days, fresh air and the colorful reminders that the beauty of spring always follows harsh winters.
Bob Bertog is president of Bertog Landscape Co. in Wheeling and a Certified Landscape Professional with the National Association of Landscape Professionals. He is also past president of the Illinois Landscape Contractors Association. He and other landscape professionals at Bertog can be reached at 847-279-0028 or customerservice@bertoglandscape.com.