Looking to get your flower beds ready for spring? No worries. Here’s a simple checklist to make sure your yard is spring-ready.
Flowers in the garden brighten up the home. Creating a flower bed is one of the best ways to add beauty to a property. Here are some tips to help you get started!
Hello almost April.
Nice to meet you.
I can’t wait to show you all the things we’ve been working on in the yard. We’ve painted the bricks on the house (more to come on that), in the middle of painting the fence we built last year white, getting the yard ready for spring and summer and cleaning out the flower beds.
And somewhere along the way, I discovered something amazing.
I love to pull weeds.
Can you even believe it? I used to dread it. There were years when I would spend hours in the flower beds pulling weeds and saying things that people should never say and going all Scarlett O’Hara and shaking my fist at the sky. But now? It’s like a challenge. You look at the flower bed and it’s sad and lonely and looks like a teenager who needs acne cream and a haircut. And when you pull all the weeds and add the mulch?
It looks like it’s ready for spring prom.
If you are like me and your flower beds are looking for a date, here’s a checklist to get your flower beds ready for spring.
How to Get Your Flower Beds Ready for Spring
1. Get your tools ready for spring
- Clean out the garden shed
- Get rid of broken rakes and old plastic garbage bags and assorted nonsense that’s collected over winter
- Start your lawnmower and see if it needs attention
- Organize your tools in the shed and make a list of supplies you need for spring planting
2. Purchase new supplies
- Head to the garden store and purchase what you need for your spring planting
- If you buy it all in one trip it makes weeding more fun (karianne I’m looking at you)
- We bought mulch, fertilizer, supplies to amend the soil, seed for the lawn and plant supports for some of the new plants we are putting in
3. Prune
- There’s something so amazing and scary about pruning all at the same time
- Give your trees and shrubs a haircut
- The key to pruning is to determine what you want your plant to look like and using your pruning shears to help it get there
- We always fertilize after we prune to help our trees and shrubs recover from the shock
4. Weeding
- My favorite part. I put on a podcast and take one flower bed at a time
- I use a small spade to help me make sure I get to the root of the weed
- I try and time my weeding after a rain so the ground is softer and the weeds are easier to pull up
- After I finish weeding, I take my weeds and put them directly into a brown paper sack for the trash to pick up
- I don’t want the weeds leaving behind anything on their way out the door
5. Prepare the soil
- In North Texas we don’t have the best soil
- It needs extra help
- I’ve sent our soil off before to have it tested and they can tell you exactly what needs to be amended to help your plants and shrubs grow
- Most nurseries are great places for advice for this
- We got a soil builder from a local nursery that we are working into the soil to give our plants the best chance against the hot Texas sun
6. Check your garden edging
- We have monkey grass edging in some places and this green metal edging in others
- Make sure to check your edging to see if it needs repair
- Our edging needed a few new pieces
- Clean and repair this before you start adding mulch
7. Trim the edges of the beds
- The beds look so messy in the winter
- It’s like they have little hairs that grew up all along the top and they need to be trimmed.
- Each of our flower beds got a haircut.
- We trimmed all the edges of the beds before we put the mulch in
8. Add mulch
- We actually got all our mulch from my nephew’s baseball team
- A lot of the organic material that was there from winter (leaves, etc.) we just used as additional fertilizer and mixed it in with the bags of mulch
- To spread the mulch we broke it up by hand
- Then we used a small rake to make sure it was evenly distributed
Next, we need to give the edges of these sidewalks a trim and get the yard ready for spring. It’s Texas so we have to start now so everything is ready for the hot summer ahead. There are so many more things we have planned and I can’t wait to show you all of them. I got peonies for my birthday and we are planting those and amending the soil so it’s ready for them.
This is the summer of the yard.
But for now?
I have a few more flower beds to weed, so if you need me I’ll be outside….
…making sure my yard is ready for its promposal.
Ha! Karianne, you must have read my mind. Headed outside today to start the spring clean up. Have to admit I am kinda scared!! Lots of weeds and dead perennials out there! Wish it were already green here in NE OK like it is in Texas! (Sometimes I miss my home state.) Not sure if you heard, but Abby will be at Baylor next year!!! So excited. I saw that Denny is staying and I know your other son is either headed there or is there.
Podcasts make any task bearable or almost enjoyable in my opinion! Happy Wednesday!
My, my! The house and yard look fab!! Happy Spring dear Thistlewood!!!
I am green with envy! Our yard here in Chicagoland is still brown😕 We are in the ups and downs of temperature. Nice today but colder and posssible snow flurries over the weekend. Our springs are short and almost nonexistent. We might get a few spring days in May then it turns summer hot! I love spending time in my flower beds and can’t wait to dress them for the season. it would be so nice to actually do that in April. Your yard looks wonderful🥰
This is getting me going! Thanks for the well organized tips. I, too, love to pull weeds, feels therapeutic to me. 😊 I also listen to podcasts or audiobooks to keep me company. Have a blessed day!
I agree with Loryl, and we are even farther north...Grand Rapids Mi. I get overly excited when the snow finally melts, but instead of green, it's still pretty brown. I went out searching yesterday and can see that my daffodils and hyacinths are trying to make their entrance. I cut forsythia branches from several of my bushes last week, but sadly think the weather got just too cold for the flowers. All the branches that I brought in have only leaves...no flowers. I love seeing your lovely green lawn and flower beds...knowing that we will be there too...just a bit longer.
Judy, I'm in Muskegon, and even though we are so close, Grand Rapids always greens up faster than we do here. (I work in GR). We are getting hyacinths to bloom here and our daffodils are up, so I'm thinking you should get some color soon.
Thanks for the encouragement Kris. My daffodils look like they will bloom with just another couple days of warmer weather...my hyacinths are a little farther behind. Kris, we are such optimistic gardeners to be gardening in Michigan! HAHA
I lived for awhile in Ohio. While there, I made a friend who grew up in South Carolina. She told me that midwesterners get much more excited about little hints of spring than southerners, probably because we endured the grey-brown of winter for so long. Maybe that's a good thing--learning to find joy in the small things. :)
I've seen a few intrepid gardeners out mowing with their earmuffs on, but so far all we've done is pick up sticks and pine cones in my parents' yard! As for weeding, I don't mind it in the Spring, but remember those HOT July and August days? Let me know how you feel about it THEN! LOL! Happy gardening, my even-more-southern friend!
Looking amazing, Karianne and I'm still loving your exterior paint color! We live in SW Florida, so we work outside all year to keep the plants/trees from overtaking us! Even though we we are always working outside, spring brings a new excitement for me to get out and pull up the winter annuals and replant, trim and get my hands in the dirt. There is just something about spring and all of the hope and excitement it brings!
When I see that you already have green grass, I get so excited.! We are waaaaaay behind you. Still have piles of snow in my yard in northern Michigan. I am so ready to work in my yard! Have fun!
Hi Karianne, your yard looks amazing. I do have a little word of caution when trimming flowering shrubs and trees. If you do the trimming before they flower you will be cutting off your blooms so you may want to wait until they flower first. Thank you for the list, its always helpful to go forth with a plan! :)
Thank you Karianne for the giveaway and the sound advise.
I like to weed too!!! It's so therapeutic and gratifying. I love to stand back and look at my work and grin from ear to ear. .It feels good. I can't wait to start "digging in the dirt". I'm trying to finish up some house projects before I get outside in the yard. Keep sharing your progress.
Love all the ideas!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Thanks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Here in Pennsylvania the daffodils are already blooming, tulips following right behind. Have cleaned out all flower beds, beautiful to see everything pushing through the soil. Spring is my favorite season. Each plant pushing through send a rush of newness. Happy Spring Karianne!
So jealous. It's to early up north to prune. Even if it was, my rule is never put new mulch till after mother's day. We get those dreaded pods, which we call helicopters from the trees. I learned my lesson one season. After pruning, and putting new mulch down, the helicopters fell. What a mess. It looked like I didn't do anything. So again, this year I have to wait. I also planned on pulling some low lying bushes out and replacing them with some variegated boxwoods. While the bushes grow pretty white flower, they are scraggly and don't look good. So, Happy weed pulling. Next time your up north in New Jersey, I'll save some weeds for you.