Three Tips for your Flower Garden

Video Transcript for "Three Tips for your Flower Garden "

David Lupberger with Three Tips for Your Flower Garden: Hi I'm David Lupberger with ServiceMagic.com. I'm here with Kathy Bowen with A Boulder Gardener, a full service landscape company; and we're going to talk about 3 very simple tips to get your garden ready for spring. Kathy, can you show me what you have in mind?
Kathy Bowen/A Boulder Gardener: Yes Dave, springtime is a great time to start time to start dividing perennials. The reason you do this, is because when they get overgrown, they don't bloom as successfully as they should. So here's the example of the iris, and what you simply do is you dig it out and you divide it, it's really easy. So you can even snap it like this so therefore you have 3 brand new plants.
Lupberger: And if you do this you'll say you'll end up with more blooms once they fill in?
Kathy Bowen/A Boulder Gardener: That's right, and more plants that are free. With the perennials that you've just divided, you can now make a new planting. You make sure that the dirt is flush with the bottom of the root. And all you do now is look forward to the blooms!
Lupberger: Alright so the benefit to splitting a perennial is that you have now have several new plants to work with.
Kathy Bowen/A Boulder Gardener: Correct.
Lupberger: Alright now, can you tell me about tip #2? What's the reason to use mulch and what are the benefits?
Kathy Bowen/A Boulder Gardener: Well mulch is really important especially in new plantings, because by placing it around the new planting it keeps soil erosion down, it keeps moisture around the new plant and in addition to that it also keeps aggressive weeds away from the plants so that they can thrive.
Lupberger: What is this particular mulch?
Kathy Bowen/A Boulder Gardener: This particular mulch is called a gorilla-hair, which is the fun name for it or it's also called red cedar. And this is particularly a good mulch because it mattes to itself so it has a longer lifespan and it's also wind resistant.
Lupberger: So let's talk a little about ornamental grasses. #1 what are they? And #2 how do you take care of them?
Kathy Bowen/A Boulder Gardener: Well Dave, ornamental grasses typically grow in clumps and the reason people plant them is mostly for fall interest. But for a spring tip, to take care of them, you really need cut down the old growth to get them ready for the spring season. This plant in particular, it's a little too late but I can show you one that was done in a timely fashion.
Kathy Bowen/A Boulder Gardener: So here's an example of an ornamental grass that was cut about a month and a half ago. By removing the old stalks the new growth is now able to come up through and have a successful growing season.
Lupberger: One more thing Spring cleaning means doing it in the spring. As you're doing the general clean up make sure you're doing it early enough where you're not damaging these plantings. I'm David Lupberger with ServiceMagic.com.