Let's Talk Winter Landscaping Maintenance
As the temps and leaves drop, it's easy to breathe a sigh of relief and hope you can overlook your yard's maintenance. After all, it makes sense to get a break when it's chilly outside. However, winter is the perfect time to address essential elements such as grading drainage solutions and ensuring your yard is ready for spring. Whether you're focusing on foundation soil grading or improving the overall landscape and grading design, the cold season is an opportunity to ensure your property is protected and prepared. Here’s why winter grading, drainage solutions, and landscaping maintenance are important and how to implement them.
How to Prepare Landscaping for Spring
In Wilmington, Delaware, our winters might not be quite as hard as in other parts of the country, but we still get wind, rain, and snow. It's important to take proactive steps during the colder months to help prevent future problems and set the stage for a lush, healthy yard in the spring. Winter might seem like an off-season for landscaping, but it's important to winterize your yard and prepare for spring. When you think about and address issues like landscape grading and drainage, you’re setting the stage for a more effective transition from winter to spring. Our process allows you to prepare for seasonal change and not be caught unaware.
Focus on Grading Drainage
One of the first steps to preparing your landscape for spring is to assess how water moves across your property. It's easiest to do this in seasons when there's a good deal of water moving across your property. Poor drainage grading can lead to water pooling near your home’s foundation, causing significant damage to both your yard and your structure. By improving foundation soil grading during the winter, you can redirect water away from your home, protecting it from the spring thaw and rains.
Winter Landscaping Needs
While winter landscaping services such as grading drainage are less about aesthetic appeal and more about functionality, they are equally important. This is also a great time to prune trees and shrubs, remove debris, and start planning early spring landscape projects like planting and seeding. During late fall or early winter, you can even lay grass seed and give yourself a leg up in the warmer months. Here are a few winter landscaping needs that we've identified throughout our years of experience.
1. Finding a Landscape Grading Pro
Winter weather can lead to soil erosion, mainly if your yard isn’t properly graded. A landscape grading pro can help reshape your yard’s topography to ensure that water moves efficiently without damaging your landscaping or foundation. You could also do this yourself, but it does help to consult a professional. Our portfolio showcases just what is possible when you work with First Class Lawn Care.
2. Install or Update Drainage Systems
The soil and ground are far wetter during the winter than in the summer, and you will be able to see where your drainage issues lie, so come springtime, you can address them. We warned you it wasn't glamorous, but it is practical! Winter is an ideal time to install or upgrade your drainage systems, such as French drains or surface drains. With our winter landscaping services, you can be confident that your yard can handle the spring melt and rain, avoiding waterlogged lawns and potential foundation issues. This is one of the best ways to prepare your outdoor living space for spring.
What Time of Year is Best to Redo Landscaping?
Winter may be the ideal time to start if you’re considering a major overhaul of your yard’s landscape and grading. Here are a few highlights of why you could consider starting in the winter.
Landscaping in Winter
When you treat yourself to tackling necessary changes during the colder months, you avoid the spring rush and ensure your yard is ready for new planting, fertilizing, and seeding when the weather warms up. Whether you’re installing a new drainage system or improving grading drainage, winter gives you the chance to get ahead. Our guide to outdoor living can give you even more ideas.
Minimal Disruption to Growing Season
Redoing your landscaping in winter also ensures minimal disruption to your plants. This allows you to implement significant changes, like updating foundation soil grading or reshaping your lawn, without disturbing established plants during their active growing season.
Winter Landscaping Ideas
Landscaping ideas can be about the land, from drainage solutions to solving flooding issues that appear when storms hit to laying much seed for the spring. As some folks may think, you can do more in the winter than just the many benefits of hardscaping.
Year-Round Greenery
Winter landscaping can transform outdoor spaces into visually appealing areas, even during the colder months. Incorporating evergreens like holly, juniper, and pine adds year-round greenery, while ornamental grasses can provide texture.
Ask Us
Looking for other ideas? Talk to us about what your current yard looks like! Our service area encompasses Wilmington, Delaware, and New Castle County, and we are experts in what yards in this area need.
How Do You Prepare Soil for New Landscaping?
The soil needs to be prepped properly before any early spring landscape projects can begin. Healthy soil is the foundation of a thriving landscape, and this work often starts in winter. Don't worry: hiring the right team means that you can prepare your yard while everyone else is in hibernation but without much stress.
Early Spring Landscape Projects
Once warm weather hits, you want to be able to immediately start your early spring landscape projects and not be held up by smaller tasks that could've been completed earlier. You can also budget for landscape design installation costs ahead of time. Here are a few of the ways you can prep for these projects.
1. Test and Amend the Soil
Winter is a great time to test your soil's pH and nutrient levels. You can send soil samples to a local extension service or use a home testing kit to determine necessary amendments. This helps you prepare the ground for spring planting and seeding.
2. Improve Drainage
If your yard tends to collect water, it’s time to address the drainage grading before the spring rains exacerbate the issue. Improving the foundation soil grading around your home can ensure that water flows away from structures, protecting your home from potential flooding or water damage. Pro tip: our phones are often ringing off the hook after big storms so try to contact us before a storm leaves your yard flooded.
3. Mulch and Compost
While many people focus on preparing their lawns for spring seeding, winter is the perfect time to add mulch and compost to your flower beds and garden areas. These organic materials will break down over winter, enriching the soil and making it more fertile for spring planting.
4. Winterizing Your Yard
Part of preparing for spring is guaranteeing that your yard is protected during the cold months. Winterizing your yard means following the tips above by trimming back overgrown plants, adding protective layers of mulch, and addressing any drainage issues to help your landscape wake up from hibernation much healthier and ready to grow in the spring.
What Is the First Thing You Put on Your Lawn in the Spring?
You might have picked up on this throughout this post, but the cooler weather in winter allows your landscaping pros to lay seeds and fertilize the ground without much disruption. Let's dig in and see what's possible.
Seeding and Fertilizing
Once the snow melts and the temperatures begin to rise, the first thing you’ll want to focus on for your lawn is seeding and fertilizing. We've detailed what you can expect your landscaping team to do during this process.
1. Aerate the Soil
After a long winter, your lawn’s soil can become compacted. Aerating helps loosen the soil, allowing water and nutrients to reach the grassroots more effectively.
2. Seed Bare Spots
If your lawn has bare or thin areas, winter is the time to address them. Seeding in winter and then early spring will help improve your chances of a lush, green lawn by summer.
3. Fertilize
Apply a slow-release fertilizer to give your lawn the nutrients it needs to thrive. Make sure to choose a fertilizer that is suited for your grass type and local climate conditions. Your landscaping experts can help recommend a fertilizer that will best impact the health of your lawn.
4. Tackle Grading Drainage
If you haven’t addressed grading drainage in the winter, this is your last chance before spring rains arrive. Setting up your yard with proper landscape grading will prevent water from pooling in low spots and keep your grass healthy.
Our Winter Landscaping Services
By utilizing First Class Lawn Care's landscaping services, from grading drainage to improving soil conditions, you can set your Wilmington, Delaware, yard up for success in the spring. Whether you’re planning a complete spring landscape redesign or simply looking to prepare your lawn for spring seeding, starting in winter means you can focus on spring cleaning and not starting your landscaping plans.
Contact First Class Lawn Care today to see if a landscape design project is the right choice for you!
