Gardening is one of life’s most pleasant hobbies. Having your own patch of nature has been shown to do wonders for your mental health; especially if you live in a built-up area, it’s a welcome juxtaposition to the hustle and bustle of urban life.
But while gardening is mostly characterized as a peaceful hobby, it isn’t without its stressors. Keeping things looking smart requires a lot of hard work and effort, and it’s easy for things to get out of control if you don’t make a concerted effort to stay on top of things.
In this article, you’ll learn of some useful tools and strategies for ensuring your garden doesn’t turn into an uncontrollable jungle.
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Defining Your Boundaries
One of the most important things where proper maintenance is concerned is knowing how you want your garden to look in the first place. Without defining your boundaries, there’s no way of knowing where to cut back to if things get overgrown.
Utilizing simple fencing to enclose flower beds, grassy areas, and features is all you really need, and even if you haven’t done this when you planted the garden, you can easily install them afterwards.
It can really help to plan things out on paper, or if you’re familiar with the way it works, with 3D planning tools such as Google Sketchup. That way, you always have a reference point to refer back to which keeps you grounded when considering your overall goals.
Seasonal Changes
Regularly shaping up and defining distinct areas is one thing, but you must also be mindful to consider the changing seasons. Even rank beginners know that a garden can change drastically between these four distinct points in the year, and while you may have only considered the differences relevant to what plants you choose, there are a lot of considerations regarding the sort of maintenance work you’ll need to engage in.
Spring: Spring is a critical time for planting and promoting new growth, but it’s also very important to remove the dead branches and decaying plant life left over from winter. This is also a good time to prune any plants that are still alive and keep them healthy going through into the next season.
Summer: Summertime brings with it the double-edged sword of intense heat. This is both an opportune time for lush growth but also when a proper watering schedule and pest control are most important. With faster growing periods, you’ll also need to be sure to stay on top of lopping and pruning.
Autumn: Autumn represents another time to rethink your planting and choose new flowers and bulbs that will flourish best in the coming months. This will mean you’ll likely be doing a lot of digging in this season, so you must have proper measures in place for dealing with the mess and keeping things organised.
Winter: Don’t let winter lull you into a false sense of security. Although there’s not as much growing, this is a prime opportunity to prepare for what’s to come. It’s a good time to do any major reshuffles and redesigns – jobs that would prove too problematic in times of intense growth.
Best Tools for Shaping the Garden
When it comes to garden maintenance, cutting tools are going to form your main arsenal. There are a range of options, both manual and mechanical, and each of them have their specific use case. Let’s take a look at what your options are:
Garden Edger: An edger is a tool used to define boundaries. It’s essentially a sharp edge that you can use to create a definitive line between two separate elements of a garden, like flower beds and lawns, for example. Without one, you’ll have a tough time segmenting the space into definite sections – a key practice for efficient management, maintenance, and aesthetics.
Traditional Sheers: Sheers come in a range of types and sizes, but you really only need two types – a lopping pair and some pruning sheers. Lopping sheers are larger and used for taking the bulk out of more sizable garden varieties like bushes and trees. Once you’ve designed the rough shape, you can then go in with the smaller pruning sheers to shape the details to your liking.
Power Tools: Alongside the basics, there are also several powered tools you can make use of. These can be particularly useful if you have a very large garden or problem areas that are too extensive to tackle through the power of your muscles alone!
Strimmers and trimmers are the only power tools you really need to consider for shaping: with their high-speed rotating blades, strimmers make quick work of any tangled flora that would take too long to deal with otherwise, and by utilizing guards and fences, trimmers allow you to quickly shape bushes and shrubs without going too far.
Cleanup Tools
Finally, don’t underestimate your need to effectively manage waste. Here are the tools you’ll need:
Wheelbarrow: A wheelbarrow is a firm staple of all great gardens – it’s your go-to for transporting just about anything, be it plants, compost, or other tools. You’ll never stop finding uses for it, and when it comes to cleaning up, you can’t be without one.
Leaf Blower: All good things must come to an end, and when a carpet of hundreds of leave settles on your lawn, you’re going to be thankful you bought a cordless blower. There’s no better way to deal with garden detritus, and the amount of time and effort saved can then be put towards more important tasks.
Rake: For smaller areas that require a little more careful management, a classic garden rake is another tool you’ll want close to hand. When you’re taking the time to keep things tidy, it will undoubtedly be the tool you’ll reach for first!
Wrapping Up
Gardening is always rewarding, and no matter the season, there are always new things to look forward to. To enjoy them to the fullest, though, you have to organize yourself. Hopefully, this article has provided you with the fundamentals you need to tackle that task!
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