There’s nothing like a well-kept lawn at any time of year in Calgary. In the spring, you’ll attract pollinators to your yard and the grass growth is a good visual of the oncoming warmth. In summer, your lawn should be the prime play space for your children, or the focus of your backyard parties. Finally, in the fall, you’ll appreciate the colour contrast with the changing leaves as well as somewhere to enjoy the last of the famous Calgary sunshine. However, keeping your lawn looking good and green year round can be tricky without some information and a solid landscaping plan of action.
Take The Broad Overview
Before we get into the season specific lawn and landscape maintenance tips, it’s important to have some information at your fingertips. For your lawn, you need to know what types of grass you have and what kind of soil you have. Both of these factors will affect your mowing, fertilising and watering schedules, as well as helping you work out what type of grass would grow well in the inevitable bald patches. You can buy soil testing kits easily online, and there are many grass and plant identification apps to help you work out what mix you have out there. You will also want to spend some time in spring tracking the sunlight in your yard to give you an idea of what areas get full sun (6+ hours a day) and where your shady areas so you can pick out the right plants for the right spaces.
Spring Maintenance Tips
Spring lawn and landscape maintenance is all about preparing your soil for growth, whether it’s the solid in your lawn or in your garden beds. Here’s a quick checklist to help all your plants get started:
- Weed and weed barrier – as soon as the snowpack melts from your garden, you’ll find weeds popping up wherever there is some bare soil for them to bury into. Your first task will be remove as many of them as you can, especially those that are growing close to the flowers and plants that you want to flourish. Make sure you get the roots out so that you’re not fighting that battle throughout the year, and then install weed barrier (leaving room for further growth) around your shrubs and trees to save your time later on.
- Pruning – keep things looking neat and tidy across your garden serves two purposes. Firstly, there’s the aesthetic appeal of curated shrubs and trees that will make your garden appealing to all your summer visitors. However, the bigger benefit of pruning is that it promotes growth in the rest of the plant, and you can effectively tell the plant where to channel its energies with your cuts.
- No Mow May – while the temptation is to get the lawnmower out once the grass is long enough to trim, there’s a burgeoning movement to postpone that first mow until June. This allows your grass to grow deeper roots after its winter hibernation, as well as providing food and shade for animals and pollinators coming out in the spring. Make sure you’re watering deeply to promote deep root growth, and adding a general fertiliser across the lawn to allow seepage throughout the spring rains.
Summer Maintenance Tips
Summer Lawncare
If you’ve done your summer prep right, your lawn and landscaping summer maintenance work should be simple. For your lawn, you need to set up a watering schedule for those times when it’s not rained for a few days. Rather than a sprinkler that goes off daily, you’ll get better long term results by watering deeply by hand. You’re aiming for around 2 – 3 centimetres a week of water, and your grass will do better if you do it all in one go rather than try and space it out. This is because you want more water to go deeper in the soil to bring nutrients down to where the bottom of the roots are.
Summer Landscaping
In terms of your landscaping, it’s a question of keeping things looking sharp and clean. This means deadheading your flower plants when they start to turn brown, watering everything frequently to promote growth, and adding mulch to retain moisture and bring the soil temperature down. You can also use the vigorous Calgary growing season to train climbing flowers and shape your shrubs to grow where you need them to be (or just let everything run wild for a more natural vibe!).
Fall Maintenance
Fall lawn and landscape maintenance is all about getting everything ready for a quick growing in the spring. For your grass, this means a final mow before the first frost to keep the grass short and increase the space between the blades for water to seep into. You’ll also want to keep on top of dead leaves and branches that will sit and block sunlight and rainfall once the snow melts. In your flower beds, it’s time to prep for spring by pruning and thinning everything out to promote growth once the warmth comes again.
Working With The Professionals
For some people keeping your garden green and aesthetically pleasing all year round is part of the fun, but for most Calgary residents, it represents an additional chore that often gets in the way of actually enjoying your garden. If this is you, then it’s time to connect with Scoop Cut N Shovel’s team of lawn and landscaping experts. We will come to your property throughout the the year and help you keep on top of your garden maintenance. There are a variety of subscription packages to choose from, including just a lawncare and mowing set up or a one time spring and fall clean up, but you’ll always save more when you bundle different packages together. Our ultimate savings comes with our year round property maintenance package which also gives you access to our professional snow and ice removals services to keep you moving all year long. So call today to start your stress free year round garden lifestyle.