Top 6 Landscape Maintenance Tips for Homeowners
Your landscape is so much more than just your lawn. Landscaping connects your home with the outdoors, creates a welcoming ambiance, elevates the magnetic curb appeal or backyard oasis, and even supports air-cleaning plant life and habitat for birds and pollinators. In addition, maintaining a landscape helps boost the value of your home.
For many discerning homeowners, landscape maintenance is not just about keeping the grass green during the summer months but also about proactively caring for the health, beauty, and longevity of your landscape as a whole. If this sounds like you, you likely prefer to partner with a landscaping professional to ensure everything is taken care of, and your landscape is lush, healthy, and green for many years to come. From regular care to seasonal to-dos, landscape maintenance involves a variety of tasks. Many of these tasks should be care of by professionals, such as pruning, fertilization, and sprinkler audits.
We've put together this helpful guide of six landscape maintenance tips to get you started in knowing what kind of professional services can keep your landscape healthy, year-round.
Keep an eye on plant health
Once you have plants in the ground, the work isn't done. Maintaining plant health is about preventing diseases and pests and taking action if you notice anything "off." Brown or yellow leaves, dry patches in your lawn, or other signs of poor plant health could come from various issues. Sometimes, yellowing leaves are simply a natural part of the end of the annual life cycle.
Other times, it may be a sign of insufficient nutrients, lack of moisture, the presence of insects, or a disease. As landscaping professionals, the Webby team can expertly diagnose and treat any plant health issues.
Schedule seasonal and ongoing maintenance
Some landscape maintenance is best scheduled for either fall or spring. Perennials should be cut back for healthy new growth, but some are better to prune during the fall, and others in the springtime. Fall is ideal for cutting back overgrowth —it's a good time to maintain the shape and health of many shrubs, bushes, and trees. You can prune other flowering and ornamental plants when spring arrives to support new, tidy growth.
Care for your trees
If your landscape includes trees, it's essential to care for them to ensure their longevity, health, and natural beauty. Trees are expensive and take quite a while to mature — an investment of money and time. Maintaining your trees is a worthy use of both.
The springtime is ideal for spraying trees with something called "Dormant Oil," which covers any overwintering insects and their eggs that may be waiting for warm weather to hatch. Spring is also a great season to prune shrubs or trees in anticipation of summer growth. When trees are properly cared for, it helps them live longer, get better exposure to sunlight, add value to your property, and even prevent injuries or property damage from the potential of falling tree limbs.
Do a springtime sprinkler audit
Auditing your sprinklers or irrigation system is a proactive way to maintain your landscaping. It ensures you're watering your lawn efficiently, which can help save money, conserve water, and care for the health of your plants. Once brown spots have begun to form in your lawn due to a misfiring or poorly-aimed sprinkler, it can be challenging to bring them back to health.
Webby can help check your irrigation system thoroughly in the spring to ensure your lawn is well-covered, and all your sprinklers are functioning perfectly, for a green, lush yard all summer long.
Plan for environmentally-friendly landscape fertilization
Fertilizer keeps a lawn green, healthy, and resistant to weeds and pests — but fertilization isn't just for grass. It's important to care for trees, shrubs, and flowers by introducing nutrients that support growth.
To ensure the health of a landscape, we recommend fertilizing regularly. How often you fertilize will depend on the type of grass in your lawn. In general, fall is a great time to fertilize because it's the season when lawns naturally begin storing nutrients in preparation for cold weather.
And our #1 tip: Keep on top of landscape maintenance
No matter what kind of seasonal or ongoing maintenance your lawn, garden, and landscape may need, it's ideal to stay on top of things before issues arise. Webby Landscaping provides gardening services and maintenance care for all types of landscapes, fostering the health, beauty, and functionality of your outdoor living spaces.
Our goal is to ensure you and your loved ones get to enjoy your landscape — whether you're BBQing, gathering around a firepit, playing catch, or just creating memories together, surrounded by nature.
If you're interested in professional landscape maintenance services for a healthy yard and garden, reach out to our team to discuss how we can help.