After a long winter it is tempting to do everything at once. Here is the order of operations that actually sets your landscape up for a strong season.
After a long winter, it's tempting to do everything at once the first warm weekend of the year, rake, mow, mulch, prune, plant. But doing spring cleanup in the wrong order can undo a lot of the good it's meant to do. Here's the sequence that actually sets a landscape up well.
1. Clear debris before anything else. Fallen branches, matted leaves, and winter debris should come off beds and lawn first. Leaving this in place while you mow or mulch just buries the problem instead of solving it, and matted leaves left too long can smother grass underneath.
2. Cut back what you left standing in fall. If you left perennial seed heads and ornamental grasses up over winter (a good practice for wildlife), now's the time to cut them back, generally once you're past your last hard frost, so new growth isn't damaged by a late cold snap.
3. Check your beds before you mulch, not after. It's tempting to mulch first because it makes everything look tidy fast, but mulching over compacted soil or existing weeds just locks both in for the season. Loosen the soil surface and pull emerging weeds first, then mulch.
4. Test before you fertilize. Applying fertilizer on a schedule rather than based on what your soil actually needs is one of the more common ways money gets wasted in spring. A simple soil test tells you whether you actually need nitrogen, phosphorus, or a pH adjustment, rather than guessing.
5. Save major pruning of spring-blooming shrubs for after they bloom. Azaleas, forsythia, and other spring bloomers set their flower buds the previous year. Prune them before they bloom and you're cutting off the very flowers you're waiting for. Wait until just after blooming instead.
Getting the order right the first weekend of good weather makes the rest of the season noticeably easier. If spring cleanup feels like more than you want to tackle in one weekend, this is exactly the kind of one-time visit we help with before switching a property over to a regular maintenance rhythm.