It happens so gradually you almost don’t notice it. The days get longer and warmer. The turf outside your window and fields along your familiar routes turn a special shade of emerald green that only appears once a year. Tender shoots of the crocus, daffodils and hyacinth push their brave faces up through the frosty soil, sometimes in spite of a late snowfall. Spring irresistibly beckons gardeners to get out there into the landscape, root around in the ground and get their hands and knees dirty.
Garden centers are awash with bright, shiny new products and a virtual rainbow of colorful annuals, interesting perennials, shrubs and trees perfect for every corner of your terrain. Before you get busy, take stock. Walk through our list of tasks, garden design concepts and garden gadgets to consider topics of growing importance in the landscaping realm, with an eye toward providing pleasure to you and your guests in the garden — whether the aim is creating a relaxing space to share a meal or a conversation, growing new foods or ornamental plantings, or providing a refuge for wildlife.
Getting Started
Before the real fun begins, there are some chores to tackle to get your garden off to a good start. Take an inventory of your tools. Clean, repair and sharpen your tools so they’ll be in fine shape just when you need them. Multipurpose garden tools are a good investment to make chores as efficient as possible. Rake or blow the last layer of winter leaf mold from the flower beds. Local experts recommend the Clog Free rake for making raking bearable.
Top dress your garden beds with compost or a good commercial soil amendment — work it into the top one inch of the garden soil. Spring is the best time to divide perennials and transplant into new locations. Share or trade some of your plants with neighbors and friends. This is a cost-effective way to add more plants to the landscape. Also, eradicate those pesky early spring weeds before they get too comfortable in your garden. Add a three to four-inch layer of mulch to discourage any new weed growth.
Prune any dead or unsightly branches from shrubs, trees and perennials after new growth has begun. Prune the spring bloomers like forsythia, azalea and rhododendrons as needed soon after flowering is complete. Thin and shape hedges after the first flush of new growth. Again, sharp and clean tools are key. With a few essential chores complete, you’re ready to go have a creative good time in the garden.
Embrace the Small Space
Whether you have a small area or a larger landscape, designers have embraced the concept of customizing garden spaces according to their purposes and integrating them into the larger plan. Secret garden ‘rooms’ provide welcome retreats for gardeners and their guests, turning a stroll through the yard into a series of cozy conversation spots. For years, outdoor dining spaces have been conveniently located just off the house, near the kitchen. However, it’s a noticeable trend that dining rooms are moving out into the garden. Construct a winding path to a more secluded, picturesque corner of the garden. Screen your new dining sanctuary with differing heights of ornamentals and container plantings for a feeling of privacy. Dwarf shrubs and ornamental grasses provide a visually interesting screen but aren’t overwhelming. The addition of a few small, lacy-leaved trees like Japanese maples adds subtle spots of color.
Fire pits and water features also make for pleasing garden getaways and can be designed as separate garden destinations. Fire features can be bought as kits, portable structures, or handcrafted from scratch. Water features can be as simple as a fountain or as elaborate as a waterfall into a pond, complete with fish. Strategically placed garden flags provide focal points among the pathways. Hide a meditation bench along a side path for a peaceful place to read or contemplate. To cut down on the chore of lugging hoses and watering cans all over the yard, invest in self-watering planters and individual slow-release drip irrigation.
Restoring Habitat at Home
Most gardeners are aware that bees and butterflies are in decline, but habitat loss is also impacting birds, frogs and even turtles. Most dwindling habitat comes from expanding commercial and residential development — good things for the convenience of the human population, but less so for the needs of local wildlife. Yet there is no reason we can’t create beautiful landscapes that also serve the requirements of many, if not most, of our animal neighbors. Many gardeners are adjusting their plant selections and even redesigning their gardens to support local wildlife. There are a few tips for creating a successful habitat garden.
Grow both seed-producing and berry-bearing plants. Restrict the use of insecticides and consider replacing some of your lawn with garden spaces. Bird-friendly choices include sunflowers, lavender, lemon balm, honeysuckle, viburnum, roses, pyracantha, holly and Hawthorne; as well as tree specimens like dogwood, crabapple, silver birch, alder and beech. Of course any gardener who grows fruit-bearing shrubs or trees is accustomed to sharing the harvest with the birds.
Charming bird feeders and bird houses provide an extra level of food and shelter for our feathered friends and are attractive focal points for humans as well. Although our squirrel neighbors need love too, we’d prefer they stick to the trees, even though they’re extremely ingenious at raiding the birds’ domain. One highly rated product is the Audubon Torpedo steel squirrel baffle — gardeners have reported that watching squirrels try to defeat this product is truly entertaining.
Bees and butterflies enjoy a patch of wildflowers and weeds — some particular favorites are alfalfa, clover, Queen Anne’s lace, and dandelions. However, there are plenty of decorative annuals and perennials that make a lovely landscape and attract bees and butterflies — rhododendron, lilac, aster, coneflower, daisy, daylily, marigold, rosemary, thyme and zinnia, among many others.
Frogs and turtles are nature’s little gifts to boggy spots in the landscape and your water feature is sure to provide a happy home for them. You’ll enjoy watching these interesting creatures go about their daily life as you help them in their struggle to survive shrinking natural habitats. In addition to their entertaining nightly serenade, some frogs can benefit the gardener by eating their entire body weight in insects in a day. Turtles love an insect meal too and are especially fond of slugs. To attract amphibian/reptile friends to your habitat, design a water feature with lush native vegetation — wetland-friendly plants, ground cover, ferns and grasses. Rocks and logs add interest and provide shelter.
Garden Experiments for Food and Fun
Gardeners are an adventurous lot — always willing to try new things. Trend-watchers have noticed a growing interest in adding botanical variety to the garden with new plants and new ways to showcase them. Try adding a vegetable garden to the landscape with some interesting edibles, herbs and even edible flowers. There is a big, wide world of diversity available to gardeners through seed companies, seed swaps, garden centers and community gardens. A big part of the fun of food gardening is trying new edibles like quirky cucamelons (grape-sized watermelons with a taste of cucumber and lime), gherkin cucumbers, chickpeas, edamame or exotic greens. And don’t forget the flowers. Include plenty of bee-friendly flowers to attract pollinators. The best blooms for the veggie garden include sweet alyssum, zinnias, cosmos, nasturtiums and calendula.
Raised beds are fabulously handy, whether they’re the do-it-yourself variety or one of the many styles available in kits online or from garden centers. They can be designed to be natural or decorative. Some of the benefits of raised-bed gardening are fewer weeds, better water retention and drainage, no soil compaction from human feet, warmer soil earlier in the season, better soil composition and less erosion. A waist-high raised bed is a good choice for herbs and smaller veggies because it brings the work space up to you for less bending and no kneeling.
Another emerging garden trend is experimenting with succulents —nature’s most durable plants. Get creative by cultivating a succulent garden or a collection of containers featuring them. Not too long ago the gardening public thought of succulents as only cactus or jade plants and dismissed the entire category as too plain. Today, exotic varieties are readily available at your local garden center or online. Succulents come in an immense variety of colors, textures and forms. One of the obvious benefits of gardening with succulents is that, unlike many other plants, they thrive on neglect. They are very drought tolerant and love light and heat. Given adequate sunlight, only occasional watering, and a bit of fertilizer in the spring, a succulent garden will flourish whether you have a green thumb or not. Succulents can be planted in small spaces in garden beds or in a collection of containers. They look nice grouped around a patio, near a fire pit, or as centerpieces for outdoor dining tables, and they instantly add personality and charm to outdoor spaces. Popular hardy choices include cacti, delosperma, sedum, agave, euphorbia, hens and chicks, and yucca.
Manageable Maintenance
Some gardening concepts need more maintenance than others. It may seem contradictory, but natural gardens, or those with a relaxed style, can be tricky to maintain and can get weedy and overgrown in a hurry. People want beautiful, eco-sensitive outdoor spaces, but they need them to be manageable over the long haul. Following some key design principles can keep your garden from getting out of hand. Thoughtful plant selection is essential. Choose a scheme that matches how you want to use your garden space. Select a fewer number of plants with an eye toward every specimen doing its ‘ job’ — easy care blooms with multi-season appeal. Careful plant selection helps achieve a natural, relaxed environment, while still landing at a comfortable spot on the maintenance chart.
Keep an eye out for garden innovations that help cut down on maintenance costs and effort, or at least help your garden grow. Make a habit of adding compost to the soil each planting season because it is rich in nutrients, and it promotes soil microbes that aid plant growth. In a nutshell, composting is a natural process of recycling organic material such as leaves and vegetable scraps into a rich soil amendment that gardeners fondly nickname Black Gold. Garden centers offer a host of new composting systems that are both more attractive and more reliable than a traditional backyard compost pile.
A rain barrel collects rainwater from downspouts and rooftops for future use watering lawns and gardens. During the summer months, nearly 40 percent of household water is used for lawn and garden maintenance. A rain barrel collects water and stores it for those times that you need it most — during the dry summer months.
Take advantage of nature’s gift of the spring season and try a trend in the garden. Then step out and enjoy the ‘fruits’ of your labor with friends and family, in solitude, or just for the pure pleasure of going out to play and getting a little dirty.