Spring: the season of new beginnings and getting outside after a long winter. As the ground thaws, it’s time to start thinking about how you can spruce up your garden in time for the upcoming season, ensuring it’s ready for new blooms to grow and for family and friends to be entertained during the warmer months. If you’re not sure where to get started, fear not: we’ve got you covered.
Ready to come out of hibernation? Roll up your sleeves and get stuck into our checklist of essential tasks to breathe some new life into your garden this spring.
1. The Big Spring Clean
Before you can get to creating new life in your garden, you first need to remove any lingering traces of winter. Much like the big spring clean we give the inside of our homes, our outdoor spaces need similar attention to thrive, so tidying up your garden is a great way to set yourself up for spring (and get some fresh air in the meantime!).
Start by clearing away fallen leaves and stalks, as these can carry bacteria that could spoil your lovely lawn. A leaf blower will make light work of this job. This organic matter can then be disposed of in a composter, which will eventually make excellent mulch for your flowerbeds. Alternatively, you could use a garden waste clearance service, who will ensure this unwanted waste is disposed of sustainably.
Alongside your garden, if you have a patio or decking, you’ve probably noticed that it’s looking a little worse for wear post-winter, so giving them a good clean will brighten up your garden even more. This can be done by hand with warm water and a sponge, or for tougher grime, a pressure washer really does the trick.
2. Take Stock of Tools
Don’t wait til spring to realise you’re missing an essential piece of kit in your gardening tool arsenal. Take stock of your inventory as winter ends and note what you’re missing, what needs to be cleaned and what needs to be sharpened or maintained. Plant diseases can spread quickly and will often be found on your garden tools, so you should be cleaning them every month or so to prevent bacteria from spreading.
If you’re not sure what you need, key gardening tools include a garden trowel for digging holes and trenches, a cultivator for loosening soil and a trowel for planting bulbs. Plus, if you don’t already have them, sharpening tools are also a worthy addition.
3. Lawn Love
From relaxing in the grass to playing in the paddling pool, your lawn is typically where you spend the most time in your garden. Giving it some TLC now will set you up for all of the fun in the sun to come. If you have any turf that’s been lifted by frost, you can start by using a roller to flatten it back down. On a dry day, it’s also a good idea to give it a once over with a brush to get rid of any worm casts.
Once your grass begins to grow, you can give it its first trim; make sure to use a mower on its highest setting so that you don’t do any damage. You could also use this time to give your grass a bit of a facelift: level out any uneven areas and plant new grass seed.
4. Get Growing
Because plants need light and warmth to thrive, spring is the perfect time to sow your first seeds of the year. If you’re big into flora, some of the best flowers to plant in March and April are sunflowers, poppies, marigolds and sweetpeas. However, if you’d like to try your hand at growing something edible this year, you have plenty of choices around this time of year - including beetroot, leeks, carrots, lettuce, spinach and much more!
To give your seeds the best possible chance, start them off in a propagator - like a mini greenhouse, with vents so you can control the temperature inside. This will kick start their germination early on in the season, providing them with a stable environment to start growing. If spring is proving to be particularly frosty or windy, you can protect your young seedlings with a light-duty protection fleece or a greenhouse heater.
5. Pruning Perfection
One of the beauties of spring is the magic of seeing what will bloom in your garden. So, make way for new growth by pruning the right plants at the right time. Have a garden knife or a pair of secateurs handy to make this task simple.
Get started by removing any dead or damaged stems as soon as you spot them. Expired stems attract insects and encourage diseases to develop. Shrubs that won’t bloom until summer, such as fuschia or butterfly bush, can be cut right back to the stem in order to have plenty of new flowers in the coming months. On the other hand, early spring bloomers like rhododendron and forsythia will produce flowers on last year’s wood, so the best time to prune them is late spring - soon after they finish blooming.
6. Ward Off Weeds
Late spring is the best time to crack down on unruly weeds. Catching them in their pre-growth season means you’ll be able to stop them from sprouting into fully flourished annoyances. There are plenty of high-quality weed killers available, and to prevent them growing on your flower beds and borders, you could even use weed control fabric.
7. Furniture Facelift
With sunny days and plenty of long bank holiday weekends on the way, setting up your garden furniture is an exciting harbinger of what’s to come, giving you more time to relax and enjoy at the time.
If your wooden furniture is looking a little dull after being stored all winter, a warm sugar soap solution and scrubbing brush will give it the necessary refresh. With metal furniture, your biggest issue will generally be rust. In this case, combine baking soda with water to create a thick paste and gently apply the solution using a cleaning cloth, leaving it on for about 15-20 minutes before scrubbing it off with some wire wool.
8. Don’t Forget Gutters & Pipes
It’s essential to routinely check your gutters and pipes, especially at the beginning of spring. After all of the wet and windy weather, you’ll want to make sure that your gutters are free of debris and other natural gunk. Give them a good clearout and make any necessary repairs.
Contact Your Local Waste Removal Company
If you’re looking for help with garden waste clearance after a big spring clean, Mark Luck is the team to contact. A reputable waste removal company based in Kent, our waste management team always offers an efficient, friendly and experienced service. It starts with a phone call to let us know how much waste you have, what type of waste and your location. Our team can then work out the various waste streams, as well as the best course of action for the waste to be removed. We’ll also encourage you to practise environmental stewardship by reducing, reusing and recycling as much as you can.
We hold many licences, meaning you can count on us to perform our service in the safest and most sustainable way possible, and we tailor our rubbish clearances to suit your individual needs. Whether you’re looking for garden waste clearance or rubbish recycling at scale, get in touch for a quote and to find out more today.
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