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Why Your Garden Beds and Landscape Need Mulch + Plant of the Month

Why Your Garden Beds and Landscape Need Mulch

 

Get the perfect look for your flowerbeds and landscape this spring and summer with a fresh mulch installation. Mulch provides your garden beds and landscaped areas with a finishing touch as well as other benefits for your plants and soil.

 

What is Mulch?

There are two types of mulch – organic and inorganic. For this article, we’ll be talking about organic mulches, which include:

 

Black dyed mulch – Our most popular mulch

Brown dyed mulch

Leaf mulch – We started offering this mulch in the spring. It’s made from composted leaves, it’s dark in color, and it breaks down to add more nutrients to the soil

Nutri-mulch – This mulch is a blend of Triple Ground mulch and composted manure grounded together

Triple Ground mulch – Naturally brown and has zero dyes.

Organic mulch decomposes, which improves soil structure. The woodier the mulch, the slower it breaks down, and the fewer nutrients go into the ground.

There are also inorganic and synthetic mulches, such as rubber, rocks and stones, that don’t break down in the soil. You may want to add rubber mulch for your children’s backyard swing sets.

 

Learn more: Time for Your Lawn and Landscape’s Spring Cleanup

 

9 Benefits of Organic Mulch

Since organic mulch breaks down into the soil, it provides many advantages to the earth:

 

  1. Regulates soil temperature
  2. Keeps moisture in the soil
  3. Protects plant roots from frost heave
  4. Provides nutrients for the soil as it breaks down
  5. Improves your curb appeal and makes your landscape look well-kept
  6. Protects your trees from mower damage
  7. Suppresses weeds
  8. Improves soil structure, so there’s airflow, moisture retention, and a dynamic ecosystem underground
  9. Corrects poor soil drainage and enhances nutrient-holding capacity.

 

How Jamison Lawn Care Installs Mulch on Your Doylestown Township Landscape

At Jamison Lawn Care, we’re busy cleaning out flowerbeds and landscaped areas. Suppose you want your freshly mulched flowerbeds to continue looking their best over the summer. In that case, you need to regularly maintain your beds to keep weeds under control—because weeds will continue to pop up in your landscaped areas.

 

Here are keys to ensuring a weed-free landscape bed throughout the summer:

We weed your beds before we apply mulch

We apply a pre-emergent weed control before we put on mulch

We install 2” of mulch, and we smooth it out

We’ll clean all hardscapes of excess mulch.

 

If you want your beds to look as good as the day we worked on them, we highly recommend that you join our bed maintenance program. Our bed maintenance program includes:

A once a month visit 

Weeding

Debris removal

Regular pruning and shearing.

 

Ideally, we should clean out your beds and landscaped areas in the fall and apply a fresh mulch installation to keep plant roots snug in the winter. Book your mulching appointment today by calling us at 267-621-4747 or fill out our contact form.

 

Sources:

TheSpruce.com, “Mulch Types for Flowerbeds.”

Ibid, “What is Mulch? 

 

 

Plant of the Month: Viburnums

 

Have you ever smelled the sweet smell of viburnums blooming at the end of June? If not, you need one of these shrubs in your landscape.

 

While not all viburnums have fragrant blossoms or fruits to attract wildlife, you can still find varieties that have showy flowers, attractive leaves, and some evergreen ones too.

 

What Are Viburnums?

They are a woody plant that grows as a shrub or a small tree. Some viburnums are native to North America, while other varieties hale from Japan and Korea.

 

Since Warwick Township, PA is in growing zone Zone 7a, you have many choices to choose from when it comes to viburnums.

 

Viburnums are a low-maintenance shrub. They prefer dry or moist, fertile soil. Viburnums grow well in the sun to partial shade, and many varieties blossom in the spring. They provide almost year-long color to your landscape.

 

Leaves vary from evergreen to semi-evergreen to deciduous, where leaves change to deep, rich colors depending on the plant.

 

Overall, viburnums need good air circulation to prevent disease, and they have a few pests that can infest them. Also, viburnums need regular pruning to keep their beautiful shape.

 

Viburnums have varying blossom shapes and fragrance levels. Some viburnums have simple four corner flowers, others have flat-topped clusters like lace-cap hydrangeas, and other viburnums have snowball-type flower heads. Blossom colors range from creamy-white to pink.

 

7 Native Viburnums to Consider

Did you know that there are 150 species of viburnum in the world? The cultivars grow in North America, South America, and Asia.

 

The wide variety of viburnum gives homeowners many choices for their landscapes. However, you may want to consider native viburnums because they can tolerate dry conditions, hot summers, and other local climate idiosyncrasies.

 

Read more: Eco-Friendly Landscaping Ideas

 

Here are seven native viburnums to consider for your Bucks or Montgomery county landscape:

 

Nannyberry (V. lentago) – This drought-tolerant viburnum produces edible berries, called drupes, and colorful leaves in the fall. Nannyberries grow 14’ – 16’ tall.

Southern arrowhead viburnum (V. dentatum) – This cultivar grows colorful fruits and leaves in the fall. It’s also very adaptable to sun and shade landscaped areas. This variety has lace cap floral heads in bright, deep blue, pink, and white. It has oval-shaped leaves with tooth-like edges.

American cranberry bush (V. trilobum var. opulus americanum) – This viburnum isn’t a cranberry plant. However, it does produce edible fruit that you can eat or make into jams and jellies. Migrating birds also love the drupes.

Swamp haw (V. nudum) – This cultivar has a lace cap flower head similar to a lace cap hydrangea. It produces colorful berries that change hues from the summer through fall that various birds love to eat.

Hobblebush (V. lantanoides) – This cultivar also has lace cap blossoms and bright red berries. The leaves are oval with tooth-edges and change colors to deep mulberry in the fall.

Maple-leafed viburnum (V. acerifolium) – This variety looks like a native red maple tree with the same leaf shapes, and it turns into brilliant hues like its namesake. It grows well in dry conditions and shade. It’s a non-invasive species.

Black haw viburnum (V. prunifolium) – This cultivar is a suitable substitute for crabapple trees. It grows in full sun or shade and does well in a variety of soil types. It bears dark fruits that birds flock to eat during the winter.

 

If you want to add a native or another viburnum cultivar to your landscape, call us today to talk about adding them to your Doylestown landscape at 267-621-4747 or fill out our contact form.

 

Jamison Lawn Care serves homeowners and commercial properties in Buckingham and Warwick Townships, including these Pennsylvania towns:Chalfont, Doylestown, Furlong, Hatboro, Horsham, Jamison, Southampton, Warminster, Warrington, and Warwick.

 

Sources:

Brooklyn Botanic Garden, “Native Viburnums.”

Fine Gardening, “All About Growing Viburnums.”

The Spruce, “12 Species of Viburnum Shrubs.”

 

Jamison Lawn Care | 267-621-4747
P.O. Box 32, PA 18929
www.jamisonlawncare.com

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