Garden jobs to do in spring: Three spring cleaning jobs to revamp your garden with this season
Mario Bautista
9honey Living’s The Wash Up: Your 30-day spring cleaning guide is a month-long series aimed at making your annual house clean easier with hacks and expert advice.
The inside of the home can be sparkling clean and yet the space just won’t feel pulled together without the outside areas also looking their best.
Whether you’ve started your spring planting or not, the garden will need a general tidy up after wild winter (and early spring) weather.
These jobs will help make the space feel ready to dive into some planting projects or just provide a blank slate to set up your outdoor entertaining area.
READ MORE: The $2 cleaning hack that can transform your entire outdoor area
Here are the main three things to consider doing to your garden this spring.
Leaves
Even if the garden isn’t at its best, clearing away leaves goes a long way to making the space look tidier.
Strong winds and heavy rain mean leaves tend to be an issue year round rather than just in autumn.
One of the easiest jobs you’ll do this spring (though it is very physical), all you need to collect leaves is a good outdoor broom for hard surfaces, a rake for grassy areas, gloves and a bucket or bag to collect leaves in.
READ MORE: The simple three-step process to an organised linen cupboard
Leaf blowers make the job much quicker and easier but aren’t necessary to get it done.
Using your chosen tool, make a pile or piles of leaves and then put those into a bucket or bag to easily take to your green bin. If you can move your green bin to the area you’re sweeping that’ll make things even easier.
Leaves and garden debris can also go in compost bins.
Weeding
You can have a perfectly manicured lawn, clean driveway and lush lawn but they just won’t look as good with weeds poking through.
There are a few approaches to weeding and one of the best and cheapest is to get down on your hands and knees and pull them out yourself.
Wear gardening gloves and grab a weeding tool to assist and then just grab and pull, it’s a very satisfying job to do, especially if you’re frustrated about anything.
READ MORE: Big mistake causing weeds to overtake summer lawns
For areas like sides of paths, cracks in driveways and under the fence (when weeds creep in from the neighbours, you might need something that literally gets to the roots and kills the unwanted plant.
You can use boiling water, a spray bottle filled with a mix of a litre of vinegar, a cup of salt and a tablespoon of dish soap or store bought weed killers. Just be careful when using these methods not to get them on other plants as they will end up dying too.
Gardening hacks you need to know for thriving plants
Pruning
The time to prune specific plants usually depends on when they have finished flowering, so if you have any winter flowering plants that need cutting back spring is a good time to prune them.
Other areas to consider pruning are an overgrown hedge, diseased or dead branches and any precarious or overhanging branches that could easily fall or snap during heavy winds.
For a daily dose of 9honey, subscribe to our newsletter here.
READ MORE: Everything to know ahead of Amazon’s Prime Big Deal Days sale
Deadheading is another task to consider and get in the habit of now before spring plants really start blooming. This simply involves removing the spent bloom so that the plant can focus its energy on producing more blooms.
Examples of plants that need deadheading are geraniums, chrysanthemums and gerberas.
For many flowers you can cut back at the nearest set of leaves but for something like gerberas you’ll have to go right down to the base of the stem, rather than just cutting off the head of the plant.
FOLLOW US ON WHATSAPP HERE: Stay across all the latest in celebrity, lifestyle and opinion via our WhatsApp channel. No comments, no algorithm and nobody can see your private details.
