Now that you’ve had the sprinklers running for a while, have you noticed any issues with your drainage?  For example, there is an excess of water spilling out from your garden or lawn onto the sidewalk or, even worse, into your house.  Don King Landscaping can establish positive drainage in your yard which will eliminate all these problems and get your yard growing like it should.

If you love the beautiful flowers of Crab apple and Cherry trees, but don’t want to deal with all the fruit that falls and makes a mess on your yard there is another option for you.  You can get fruitless trees that still flower.  This means that you can enjoy the beauty of the trees without the mess.  (However, if you are craving a homemade cherry cobbler right now though, a cherry tree that does produce fruit in your front yard would be overflowing with cherries for you to pick!)

If you want to keep your plants healthy throughout the summer without using chemicals for fertilizers, composting is a great option.  Keep a container in your kitchen for your food scraps and put them in a tumbler, a homemade crate or just a big pile where your compost can do its magic.  Try to add big amounts at a time, instead of just throwing an apple core, or a banana peal one at a time on it.  If you’d like to get more material than just the food scraps from your kitchen, consider going to a local coffee shop and asking for their grounds to add to your pile.

After your flowers have bloomed and then shriveled up, it is important to keep the plant healthy and looking good by dead heading them.  This is just simply plucking or cutting off the end of the stem where the flower was.  This helps the plant to grow back fuller and to keep it looking healthy.

Here at Don King Landscaping, we are very proud of the stonework that our masons do (see previous Tips of the Day).  If you’re thinking about stonework, but want more than just a patio, a stone sitting wall is a great option.  Here are two separate sitting wall projects we just finished.  They can be done in different material than the patio, as you can see in the pictures, to add interest.  The first one has a lot more color and texture in the stone than the ground, while the second one is four inch dry stacked in mortar.  They both add interest to the patio while providing the perfect place to sit and enjoy it.

Right now is the time when the sun is scorching people’s lawns.  If you don’t have sprinkler system, you should consider installing one.  If it isn’t working properly, have someone from Don King Landscaping come to repair it before your lawn gets too burned up.

Because we think the New Mexico Buff is so beautiful here at Don King Landscaping, we’d like you to see another picture of work we’ve done with this stone. . .

If you want to add a different dimension to your garden, try putting a trellis up against a fence or your house.  Many of the vines grow quickly and thickly.  It adds height, is beautiful and gets better as it matures.  Try English Ivy, Wisteria, or Clematis.  Some unique ideas are sugar snap peas and pole beans.

If your yard got hit by the recent hail storms here in Colorado, then your plants are likely looking pretty sickly.  If you have tomato plants that are looking particularly beat up, try not watering them for 2 or 3 days.  The roots are not pulling the water out of the soil because things have been injured above soil.  So if you keep watering these injured plants root rot is likely to happen.

If a flagstone patio is something you’ve been looking into, check out the different types of flagstone that we offer.    You can choose the beautiful Colorado flagstone, that comes from right up in Lyons.  It is the light pink, beige color that is most common kind that you see around this area since it is so close.  There is also a flagstone that has a more brown, red and yellow colors in it, which is New Mexico Buff flagstone.  Below is a picture of a front walk we just finished that used the New Mexico Buff.