Landscape maintenance is a crucial part of any landscaping project.. Providing your yard with the proper maintenance and care not only keeps the home’s curb appeal pristine, but also helps protect the money you have invested into your landscape.  The value of all the landscape planning, landscape designs, and the pure physical effort exhausted in installing a landscape goes to waste if you are not going to maintain the landscape.  Many though will state they cannot allocate the time or energy to properly maintain their landscape, but there is hope for the busy homeowner. With the proper landscape design and landscape management techniques maintaining a landscape becomes simple. The key is to keep up with those landscape maintenance items and not losing control.

The first step in maintaining a landscape is in the design stage.  When sitting down with a landscape designer, explain in great lengths on how much or how little landscape maintenance you wish to have throughout the year. That will be a deciding factor in what plant materials, types of groundcovers, natural stone materials, or landscaping mulch will be installed.

If you wish to have very little maintenance, a selection of native plant materials hardy for the temperament zone you reside in, a durable clay paver or natural bluestone, and use of a organically colored hardwood mulch would be a route to explore. Another great design element that is commonly overlooked is the size of the planting beds in relation to the home and the property. The last thing you need is larger than necessary planting beds, full of overgrown shrubs and perennials, next to a small Minneapolis home.  Avoid plants that grow quickly and will require trimming on a frequent and regular basis, especially if you are not very skilled with trimming.  As a landscape design professional, we cannot stress the term simplicity enough!!   After it is determined how much of your home will be landscape the following are a few important tips to aid in properly maintaining your landscape.

1) Stay in control of weeds and stop the spread of them. Weeds can be taken care of by avoiding open areas of ground and using mulch or small groundcovers. Using plants in mass groupings not only displays tremendously well, but also is a great way to cut down on the use of mulch and weeds. When pulling weeds, extract the root as well as the plant to prevent them from sprouting up again. Try to keep on top of weeding regularly to prevent them from going to seed.

2) Trim your shrubs in the fall. This will not only result in greater bud production in the spring, but also clean up of any leaf material is not as adbuntant as it would be in the summer.

3) Do as much fall maintenance as you can. Accomplishing more landscape maintenance in the fall allows for an easier transition in the spring.   Gather leaves throughout the yard and place them around perennials to provide protection throughout the winter and add nutrients to the soil. With these few simple tips, you should be able to keep on top of the major points of landscape maintenance.  If you feel that your landscape has begun to spin out of control and would like a consultation, or an estimate on any landscape maintenance in Minneapolis, call Ground One!  Ground One’s educated and highly experienced staff would love to assist in any of your landscaping needs, from Minneapolis landscaping and lawn careRichfield fall clean up, to Bloomington snow removal services.

Call the “Experts in Landscape Artistry”.