Is Your Landscape Winter Ready?

By: Neil Henry, Green Horizon Landscape

Home owners across Pennsylvania are squeezing in the last few warm days of outdoor activities. Don't forget to take the following steps to ensure that next year’s lawn and garden can withstand all the fun you come up with.

What worked this year?

Take a good close look at the annuals you chose for your deck, patio or landscape border. Which ones flourished in the shade, or didn't droop too much in the hot sun? Avid gardeners in the last century often kept a diary that noted bloom times and performance of the flowers and shrubs they planted – but today’s gardener has a smartphone. Take lots of photos of your landscaping and create a folder of the results so you can remember what to buy, what not to buy, and where to put it when it’s time to visit the nursery next spring.

The final clean up.

Preparing your garden areas for winter serves not only as an aesthetic benefit but also is a good time to prune some (not all) of your shrubbery and cut back your perennials to the ground. There are correct times of year to prune specific shrubs which will allow them to flower the following year, but also there are certain times of the year to do maintenance pruning to shape or reduce in size. Contact your professional for a more detailed plan to make sure your plantings are taken care of correctly.

Photos: Green Horizon Landscape

Thinking ahead to next year.

As noted earlier, documenting what worked and what didn’t work this year is a great way to be sure next season, you have the best landscape in the neighborhood. Also, this is a great time of year to be thinking about future projects at your home. Maybe it’s the addition of garden areas, a privacy screen, or an outdoor living space. Talking to your landscape contractor during the ‘slow season’ has its benefits. It allows more time to plan out your project making sure it is exactly how you envisioned it, and sometimes there can be incentives to sign on to a maintenance program early or to pull the trigger on that larger project you have been putting off all summer!

Get more tips and help you with your landscaping and lawn-care questions at www.greenhorizonlandscape.com