Preparing Your Garden for Winter

Raking up garden leaves

Winter is coming. It’s relentless and ready to sneak up on you at any time. Don’t let your garden be its victim and begin prepping with a head start. If you would like to know how you can effectively prepare your garden for the upcoming frost by winterizing your garden, then read on.

Look After Your Lawn

After the burst of growth during the summer, lawns need to be taken care of before winter comes along and halts their progression. The first thing you should do is remove all thatch and moss that’s gathered. You can accomplish this by using a motorised scarifier, however, a springtime rake would be equally as efficient for a smaller lawn. If you do have an overwhelming amount of moss intruding your greenery, it might be a sign of drainage issues. What you can do is go over your entire lawn with a lawn spike aerator or even a garden fork would do the trick to successfully aerate your lawn. You should then apply a sandy dressing, which can be combined with autumn lawn feed and moss killer products to supply your garden with all the needed nutrition for the upcoming frosty months.

Garden Tidy Up

Take into consideration cleaning and tidying up your garden area. Assess the remaining plants and clean up any decaying ones. You can also use old plants to provide nutrition to your soil, though, be aware of any disease or pests harbouring them. Autumn is a great time for you to set aside an hour or so to remove all the invasive weeds that crept up during the busy summer. Additionally, you should rake up all fallen leaves as to both attain a tidy garden and prevent slippery paths. Once you’ve built your little pile, you can use them to create leaf mould, which does wonders to soil by adding structure and organic matter. Handmade leaf mould is easy to make, however, it might take up to two years to develop depending on the trees. Shredding the leaves beforehand will support the rotting process. Or, to help wildlife, leave these piles for hibernating critters.

Give the Flower Beds Some TLC

You should also protect and prepare your soil. You can achieve this by replenishing mulch. Having the same advantages as summer mulching, if you add a thick layer of mulch to the soil exterior, it will help the soil transition into winter and adjust its moisture and temperatures. In regards to preserving your plants, there are several things you can do. Since roots are vulnerable during cold weather, in order to shield shrubs in containers you should wrap the pots in bubble wrap. An added touch can be concealing the wrap with hessian sacking for another layer of insulation and appearance’s sake.

As for tender plants, such as Cannas, Agapanthus and palms, you can either move the pots into a greenhouse or set up a shack out of rods and tie on the material, enrobing the bottom in the soil to secure it. Afterwards, you can plant your spring bulbs. Bulbs like daffodils and snowdrops like free-draining well-fertilised soil. Dig up two or three times the depth of the bulb itself and leave the same amount of space in between each of them.

Plan for the Year Ahead

Finally, you should grab a notebook and walk around your garden. Reflect and evaluate all things that went well during the past year and point out everything that didn’t quite work out and meet your expectations. Write down a list of what you would like to keep and improve the following year.

Still need extra help preparing your garden for the new year ahead? Call our design team on 0116 210 0760 today.

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