Designing a Spring Landscape

A great spring landscape complements your home, your lifestyle and your yard's existing greenery.  Before you begin planting, it's worthwhile to spend some time designing a landscape.  These design ideas will help you build on what you've got to create a smart, eye-catching spring landscape that boosts your home's curb appeal.

Landscape Design Ideas

Start by taking an inventory of the plants already in your yard.  When do they peak?  When you're creating a landscape design plan, it's best to incorporate plants with varied bloom times to achieve year-round color.  Fill in any seasonal gaps in your current landscape when you're selecting new plants.  Sprinkling evergreens, trees and shrubs throughout your spring landscape will help ensure your yard keeps up with the seasons.

Along with including plants that peak at different times of the year, use a variety of plant sizes, colors and textures to add depth and interest to your spring landscape.  This approach is most effective when you mix bloom times and aesthetic features within each planting bed.  To tie all these elements together, duplicate plants throughout your landscape design plan.  Planting only one - or one cluster - of each variety can make your landscape look scattered.

A great, cost-cutting way to create a sense of continuity in your spring landscape is to remove plants from overgrown sections and transplant them to bare spots.  Thinning out dense areas will free up space for other plants to grow, which will make your yard healthier.  Plus, you'll save money on purchasing plants to fill in those sparse areas.

To prevent overcrowding, make sure you consider plants' mature sizes when you are designing a landscape.  Selecting and placing plants according to their full growth potentials will prevent unhealthy competition for resources and help ensure they have room to flourish.  It can also cut down on maintenance.  For example, if you want to plant shrubs beneath your window, choose a low-growing variety that can reach its full height without obstructing the view.  Your spring landscape will look more natural, and you'll spend less time pruning.  Remember, effective landscape design ideas complement - not obscure - your home.

Caring for Your New Spring Landscape

Once you've created your landscape design plan, get your equipment ready for spring.  Check your MTD Garden Tiller to ensure the tines are sharp - especially if you need to cultivate soil for new planting beds.  If you need any tiller parts or other replacements, use our Outdoor Power Equipment Parts Finder to quickly locate the right matches for your machine.  Also consider investing in a MTD trimmer to neatly and easily edge around your planting beds and yard.