The varying seasons can give your garden quite a beating over the course of a year, but there’s little more damaging to your beautifully kept lawn and precious flowers than a harsh, relentless summer. If you’re due to experience a particularly dry summer, make sure you are prepared.

We’ve compiled a selection of gardening tips to help you keep your lot in tiptop condition during those harsh summer months. Remember that gardening advice is worth nothing unless it’s applied consistently – so don’t leave your garden to the elements for any length of time, or it may be difficult to salvage it from any damage caused.

Water Those Plants

You’re going to get tired of bringing out that hose, but it’s important that you keep your garden hydrated, particularly during a drought. It’s recommended that you water your plants late in the afternoon or early in the morning. This will ensure that you experience little evaporation as a result of those fiery rays.

Water your plants nice and deep so that the roots are taken care of as well, ensuring absolute maximum benefit.

…But Not Too Much!

The mistake many novice gardeners make is to give their garden too much water. Remember, too much of a good thing will have adverse effects. Some people try to overcompensate for missing watering sessions by doubling up the next time, or ‘over-watering’ dry, cracked soil, which can lead to its own potential problems.

A usual suspect for an over-watered garden is the use of sprinklers or accidentally leaving the hose on. Of course, larger gardens sometimes require the use of a sprinkler system – but as always the manual approach is one that your garden will hugely benefit from.

This is one of the worst mistakes you can make and will render our other gardening tips as useless.

Make sure you water your plants little and often. That’s the key! Don’t drown them in an ocean of water – that’s just as bad as not giving them any water at all.

Cover Your Soil

One excellent way of protecting your garden from a harsh summer is by giving your garden a ‘blanket’ that will act as shielding cover. This will help water stay underground for longer periods, giving your plants and soil the necessary watery goodness.

We recommend using bark, as it also helps prevent the spread of weeds in your garden. Weeds can ‘steal’ the water from your lovely plants, causing lack of nutrition in the plants you actually want to grow!

New Plants? Think Carefully!

If you’re very keen to plant new plants in your garden, make sure you do your research first. If you live in hot arid climates or if you’re expecting a particularly dry summer, try going for plants that are known to excel in warmer climates and arid conditions, such as cacti and succulents.

These will grow during the hot months without a problem and you won’t have to think about watering them too much.

Final Word of Advice

As you can see from our gardening tips, taking care of your garden during the summer isn’t particularly difficult. Individually, each step is quite basic at its core and doesn’t require degree in horticulture. However, it’s all about your dedication and consistency, rather than the complexity.

We’ve already mentioned it in our introduction, but it’s worth stressing the following – you can use the best tools in the business, you can do all of the reading you want, you can obtain gardening advice from a range of expert, but if you don’t apply the methodology on a consistent basis it will lead to potentially irreparable damage.

It can require quite an investment to rehabilitate a garden that has been devastated from the summer heat – you have been warned!

Article written by Bury Hill Landscape Supplies Ltd.

Bury Hill Landscape Supplies Limited is a family run business selling a wide range of high quality topsoils, landscape materials, turf and seasoned hardwood logs and coal.