Hooray for spring! If you’re tired of snow, rain, and the long nights of the winter months, you’re not alone. Spring is a time of beginnings, and many people take advantage of the opportunity to start fresh by cleaning or pursuing garden and home projects. However, spring can bring its share of challenges in the garden. If that garden list is getting a little too long, here are some chores that you don’t need to do this year.

Clean Your Gutters

Gutter cleaning is one of the most dangerous tasks in the garden, since you need to stand on a ladder to do it. Instead, invest in gutter covers that allow the water to move quickly into the gutter while keeping debris out. You’ll keep your gutters clean and clear, and you’ll also avoid the cost of gutter replacement, since your gutters will no longer be sagging, warping, and weighed down by those heavy fall leaves.

Turn Over the Soil

There’s a lot of controversy over digging. Many people believe that a garden does just as well if it’s treated like a forest, accumulating soil on top of existing soil year after year. If you add mulch to your soil in the fall and winter, this layer of organic material will protect the existing soil and will decompose over time, adding new nutrients to your garden. When you set up your garden soil cycle like this, you don’t really need to dig a lot in the spring. Just plant directly into those rich, mulched layers.

Set Up Your Watering System

While many people have irrigation systems, you may not need to install a large-scale irrigation system or water by hand if you can plant and landscape in a way that saves water. Use plants that love your climate, whatever that might be. If you experience drought, make sure that your plants can tolerate this. Mulch around the base of each plant to make sure that water that falls on the soil stays in the soil instead of evaporating. Landscape your garden in such a way that you direct water to the places where it is needed. Using swales and designated pond areas, you can capture and store water so that it feeds your garden throughout the year.

Plant Annuals

Bringing in lush planters and adding annual plants to borders can be part of the fun of gardening for many people. However, if you don’t have the time, energy, or inclination to garden, you may resent the time you spend making your home look pleasant by adding annual plants to the garden. If you’re not a fond annual-lover, save your time by adding hardy, drought-tolerant perennials instead. You can find many perennial varieties of plants that are just as beautiful and colorful as those annual plants.

Stake or Prune

With many perennial plants comes the possibility of ongoing maintenance. You’ll need to water, prune, and transplant over time. To avoid these chores, choose drought-tolerant, dwarf, and non-staking varieties of plants. For example, you might choose a dwarf burning bush or a dwarf lilac to add color to your garden. You don’t need to prune these smaller varieties.

Avoid Spring Blossoms

Blossoms are beautiful, but camellias and magnolias and other large-blossomed plants are similar to fall leaves: they add a large amount of organic material that they distribute across your lawn. Those beautiful blossoms turn into something that you need to pick up. If you have blossoming trees and want to keep them, consider treating those blossoms as an extra layer of mulch under the tree, moving them around the base instead of bagging them. If you are installing a new garden, add evergreen plants or others that don’t create blossoms so that you’ll avoid that element of spring cleanup.

Garden and home maintenance is an ongoing task, but in some cases, you can invest just enough time and money in selected garden chores so that you won’t need to do them again for a long time. When you’re designing your garden landscape, design it for ease. If you’re embarking on a gutter replacement project this year, contact Harry Helmet, and learn more about Gutter Helmet and how it can make your life easier.

Written by Del Thebaud