Wheaton : Taking Care of Your Landscape This Summer

Summer brings warm weather, rain bursts that come from nowhere, and school vacation for the kids that aren’t in year-round programs. 

Summer also brings time to revise, update, and renew your landscape. A refreshed landscape can bring refreshed attitudes to all who enjoy it. Your Wheaton Lawn and Landscape team helped you to create your landscape, and they can help you refresh it. 

What are we looking for in a revised and refreshed landscape? Your landscape has been finished for a couple of years now, and except for replacing plants after a hard winter or refreshing the mulch, it’s still what it was when it was finished. Is this a bad thing? Definitely not. Many people rely on their homes to remain the same and familiar when the rest of the world seems like a weird race track with lanes going in all directions and no actual speed limit.

However, if you work from home or need a change, it’s easy to refresh your house and outdoor areas. For example, you might want to repaint the living room or kitchen, get some new appliances, or replace upholstery patterns and colors. You can do the same outside by replacing cushions, plants, colors, and patterns. You could even replace things like your retaining wall around the garden area or the bricks around your fire pit, but those items are likely to be expensive and time-consuming. Let’s start with something simple.

What do you see out the back window?

Let’s look at what you see when you are at your back window, cleaning up after a meal with your family, or doing things in the kitchen.

Your outdoor living area is coming along. The cushions on the chairs and lounges haven’t changed since it was built, though. The movable furnishings are still in the same positions.

You’ve added outdoor curtains, a brilliant idea. They help guide the breezes and block some of the sun’s harsh light on a hot day. During the winter, the curtains can help make your outdoor living area a little warmer so you can still enjoy it. 

Try different things

Your raised mobile beddings look great. The herbs and veggies look like you use them often to enhance your meals. Do you change the positions of the planters? Changing positions can offer more even sunlight for all the plants. 

What about the accent trees in the big pots stationed all around your patio? Do they all get enough sun? If some of them tend to droop on one side, adding a wheeled platform or plant holder might make it easier to turn them or move them to different spots, depending on the season.

Your lighting in the outside area is pretty even. Can you turn off sections as you wish to change the atmosphere? Maybe turn off the electric lighting completely and add torches? You can change the entire attitude of an area by changing the position or texture of the lighting. 

Take a walk

Walk around your landscape. Take a small notebook, or use the photo and notepad functions on your phone to record your ideas for change. Invite one or more of your landscape team to walk with you – they will have some ideas for improvement and better health for your landscape. In addition, they might think of things that wouldn’t occur to you.

Your Wheaton gurus can surprise you by suggesting things they noticed months ago. They would enjoy a chance to discuss some of the things they’ve noted or wanted to change. Like you, they can see places where the wrong shrub or a different shape might make a huge difference. 

Summertime means different watering schedules and different ways to take care of your plants to keep them safe from heat, pests, and weeds. Your landscaping team has probably already adjusted your irrigation. They added a rain sensor last year to help with water conservation. In addition, they want to add or change some drip systems to the flower beds and perhaps around the treeline that was created with the new trees planted a few years ago. 

Things are looking great.

It’s amazing what a few small changes can make. New colors, some new shapes, and one or two changes in location or shape can make huge differences. You and your Wheaton landscapers make good partners!