Our Favorite Landscaping Tips to Make Your Next Outdoor Project a Breeze

When the winter months seem to chase us back into our homes, the spring season is always a welcome reprieve. With patio season steadily approaching throughout the state of Delaware, our team at Wilkinson Homes couldn’t wait to share a few of our favorite tips to make your home landscaping the best on the block. 

Hone in on your preferred style

Curating your outdoor landscape can be an extremely enjoyable experience if you let it, but before you get your hands dirty, take a minute to think about what sort of design elements fit your personal style. Have you always wanted your backyard to look as if it belongs in the English countryside? Do you dream of having your own farm-to-table garden? Will an abundance of colorful flowers bring out the best features of your home’s architecture? Once you have a clear idea in mind of what your ideal landscape looks like, you’ll find it much easier to follow through on the next steps. 

Choose your plants 

Before you work on your yard and lawn care, you’ll first need to decide which plants, flowers or vegetation you plan on adding to your landscaping, so you know if you need to add any extra nutrients to your soil in order to get it primed and ready for planting. 

If your green thumb has been in hibernation for a while, you might want to consider adding some native plants to your garden. This usually ensures that you won’t have to do very much with them in order for them to thrive, and the state of Delaware is filled with incredible native plants like butterfly milkweed, northern maidenhair fern and white yarrow that would make a great addition to any home garden.

Prepare your soil

Once you know which plants you’d like to use to upgrade your landscape this spring, you’ll be able to clear out any weeds or debris from your garden and begin testing the soil. Having too much moisture in your soil isn’t necessarily a good thing when you’re about to begin planting. If the soil is too compact, it could be cutting off the air circulation to the roots of the plant—essentially killing them before they can properly begin to grow. If you’re not sure how to know if your soil has too much moisture right away, take a handful of it and try to form it into a ball. If it sticks together without falling apart at all, it’s still retaining too much water. To speed up the process, lightly rake over the soil to break it up in order for the sun to dry it out a little more before you begin planting. 

To check whether or not your soil has the correct nutrients it needs for your garden to properly grow, there are a number of tests you can pick up to use at home in order to check your soil’s pH and nutrient levels. Testing this before you begin planting gives you a better idea of how your plants will grow in your current soil and see what you may need to add to the soil in order for your plants to be as healthy as possible. 

Find your future home  

At Wilkinson Homes, we love building throughout the incredible neighborhoods the state of Delaware has to offer. If you’re ready to find your future home that has everything you hoped for—take a look through the communities we build in or our quick move-in homes and give us a call at  (610) 274-8283 or fill out our online form today.