Transforming Your Garden: Get Your Garden Ready For Summer

*This is a collaborative post on transforming your garden

With summer just around the corner, many people imagine soaking up the sun in the privacy of their garden. Gardens can be neglected over the winter months, so you might need to give your garden some love before you can use it. Here are some tips to get your garden summer ready. 

Clean

Barbecues and garden furniture can look a bit worse for wear once the wind, rain and snow have passed over them. If you are a planner, it is worth storing anything you can away in your garage before winter begins. However, hindsight is a wonderful thing!

You can use a small amount of heat to clean off any stubborn bits of burnt food from previous uses. For difficult bits, put half an onion on a fork and rub it across the grill once the heat has died down. The water in the onion helps steam away dirt and has an antimicrobial effect. 

Transforming your garden with lighting

Gardens don’t have to be daytime-only spaces. They are the perfect place to enjoy warm summer evenings. However, as the darkness rolls in you can be a bit limited with how you can use it. 

A simple way to solve this problem is to add lighting. Solar lights make the perfect lights for lining pathways and illuminating potential trip hazards. As they charge during the day, they are an eco-friendly option as well. 

If you are looking to create different zones in your garden, then string lights would be perfect. You could string them above any seating, creating the perfect reading nook. 

Planting

Summer is the perfect time to show off your green thumb, and what better way to do that than with flowers? 

You will need to figure out how much of your garden you would like to fill with flowers. Smaller spaces would benefit more from flowers in planters. You could opt for plants that flower in the summer such as fuchsias. Fuchsias look stunning spilling over the edges of pots and the vibrancy of the pinks stands out. 

For bigger gardens, flowerbeds are the way forward. You will need to design a bed that has a variety of plants to encourage growth. You could mix evergreen foliage and flowering plants to create a fuller-looking bed. 

Prepare for wildlife when transforming your garden

Warmer weather inevitably brings more insects and animals into your garden. Wildlife is incredibly important to our environment so making them a safe space to thrive is helpful. 

If you do have flowers, you could craft a wildflower meadow area for butterflies and bees to enjoy. Keeping birds happy is fairly easy, you could arrange some bird boxes to encourage nesting as well as keeping a birdbath full for them to enjoy. 

Log piles are great for wildlife as well as storage for a wood burner or fire pit. Lots of bugs will love making their home in amongst the wood – just remember to give it a good shake before you burn it.