Get your garden ready for summer!
Garden ideas for summer
Each year, when the days become longer and sunnier, garden designers find that there is a flurry of activity from potential clients, as they endeavour to make their garden ready for the summer. In all honesty, if they have left this job until springtime, then they will most likely be too late to schedule a complete redesign and garden build. However, there are many smaller tasks which you can carry out in order to ready your garden for the summer months ahead.
Jet wash your garden patio furniture and if it has seen better days, now might be a good time to beat the rush and invest in a new garden table and chairs. Or would you prefer lounge style sofa seating for your patio? A place to comfortably enjoy summer days, for that morning coffee or maybe an after dinner drink. At the height of summer, garden furniture suppliers can run out of stock, so plan early to avoid disappointment. Make sure to measure the space available and plan how the furniture will fit into this space, ensuring that there is adequate room to move around easily, without creating pinch points.
Also, remember to ensure that patio paving and decking areas are clean and ready for enjoying your garden in the summer. Paving can become green and discoloured over winter and decking can become dangerously slippery, particularly if it is in shadier, north facing areas of the garden. Jetwashing can be an easy and satisfying way of achieving a remarkable improvement in the appearance of your outdoor space.
Once the risk of frosts has passed, cut back the dead leaves on your herbaceous perennials which may still look tatty from the winter. Your garden will instantly look neater and your plants will be ready for new foliage and flowers to develop over the coming months. It is a also a good idea to check your garden shrubs for any dead, diseased, dying or damaged branches and prune these back where necessary. This will help to keep the plant healthy, so that it will continue to thrive over the coming months.
If your planting beds are lacking in interest and colour, spring is the perfect time to plan any changes to your borders. Do you have gaps in the planting which could be filled with herbaceous perennials? Whilst it is tempting to buy the plants which are flowering at the moment in the garden centre or nursery, do consider how long the interest from these will last. Do a little research and choose plants which will give you several months of glorious flowers and colour. For example, the beautiful Geranium Rozanne, is a very easy plant to care for and flowers profusely from June until October. It is also a good idea to plant several of each variety of perennial which can be spread through the border, to ensure that your planting scheme looks intentional.
In spring, take the time to reseed any areas of lawn where the grass has become sparse. Having removed any weeds or moss by hand, rake the bare soil before scattering your grass seed. Then rake over the soil again to cover the seed, before watering well. Before too long, you should begin to see new shoots of grass appearing.
And finally, if you would like some help with your garden, whether this is regular garden maintenance or maybe just a few hours for a seasonal tidy up, do plan ahead. Many of the best maintenance gardeners, with good horticultural knowledge, become booked up with clients early in the season - so get in early and give them a call!
If you are considering a complete redesign for your garden or maybe a garden consultation session to help you with garden ideas, then do get in touch. We would love to talk to you about your garden plans.