10 Gardening Tips for the Spring Lawn and Landscape
Spring is an exciting and beautiful time of year. The birds are chirping, the days get longer, and spring blooms and lush green plants will soon consume the landscape. One complaint may be that the melting snow, spring showers and winter debris can leave our landscapes kind of a mess. Here are 10 great tips to get your spring landscaping off to a great start, most of us are anxious to get out and into the garden. Follow these tips and you will have a healthier lawn and landscape this growing season.
Plants with Great Winter Interest
Winter is a beautiful time of year. We have lost the lush green lawns and the bright leaves have fallen but there can still be beauty in the texture, structure and color of our gardens. Check out some of the plants that provide great winter interest. Evaluate your landscape this winter and start planning your spring outdoor projects. You will definitely want to make sure to include some of these plants in your landscape design.
Composting
image courtesy of squawkfox.com
Home composting is a great way to recycle kitchen and garden waste. Compost (also referred to as humus) is the dark, earthy, soil-like material resulting from the natural decomposition of organic matter. It is nutrient rich and great for conditioning the soil for houseplants, container gardens and the landscape, not to mention a fantastic substitute for commercial fertilizers. Composting at home is not only a rewarding landscape asset it is vital to reducing the large amount of waste sent to the dump. Did you know? According to the EPA, kitchen and garden waste makes up about 26% of the total U.S. municipal garbage sent off to the landfills and nearly 1/3 is compostable materials. Unfortunately, the waste does not break down nearly as well as it would in a home compost system. In order to decompose, the correct amount of air circulation, moisture and the proper ratio of “green” vs. “brown” materials are necessary for success. View a more detailed list of compostable materials below and read on to learn more about how and what to compost.
Plant a Cut Flower Garden
image courtesy of joenesgarden.com
Cut flower gardens; also referred to as cutting gardens are planting beds grown primarily for harvesting foliage, flowers and seed heads to make beautiful bouquets and flower arrangements to bring a piece of the outdoor landscape to the indoors. Select a nice location alongside a garage or at the back of your property. If there isn’t a space available to designate specifically for cut flowers, plant a variety of cut flowers throughout your vegetable garden or landscape. You will continuously cut the flowers and foliage to make bouquets, which makes a veggie garden a great space to incorporate your cutting garden. Some herbs with colorful foliage are very aromatic and make beautiful additions to garden bouquets.
Meet Christine
meet Christine Chaney
Crimson Valley is thrilled to have a new aspiring photographer joining us to capture our landscape projects on film. We would love the opportunity to see our clients’ landscapes grow and flourish over the years and through the changing seasons.
Christine Chaney is a college student with a passion for photography and graphic design. As a child, she would take her mom’s camera to shoot nature and their family pet. The outdoors has always been an inspiration for her and she looks forward to expanding her experience and love for nature by photographing the landscapes of Crimson Valley clients.
Find us on Facebook… Post your landscape pictures, we would love to see them! …and we might just send Christine out to take some photos of your home and landscaping!
Rain Gardens
Cutting the curb allows more runoff from the street to soak into the rain garden. photo courtesy of thecoves.ca
A rain garden is a depression in the landscape planted with native plantings that allows rainwater to runoff of impervious surfaces such as roofs, driveways, walkways, parking lots and even compacted lawns and gives it an opportunity to soak into the ground rather than into the stormwater systems.
Do areas of your landscape collect water? With spring season rainfall, you may notice the low spots in your landscape where water flows naturally. Turn those undesirable low spaces into functional and beautiful rain gardens. Rain gardens are a great way to beautify an unsightly area and reduce the amount of stormwater runoff. Designed with native plants, these gardens break up soil, filter water from impervious surfaces, and replenish our depleting ground water supply. If a low spot does not occur naturally, create one and place in between areas where run off occurs; eliminating much of the water in its path from reaching the storm water collection systems.
Welcome to the Crimson Valley Blog!
Welcome and thanks for visiting our new blog! We are a landscape company located in Rockford, Illinois and are proud to serve northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin. Our full service landscaping business specializes in landscape design, construction and maintenance. We are looking forward to the spring season and are excited to start posting landscape & garden tips and ideas for your home.
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