Get Your Garden Primed With These Spring-Planting Tips

Although the weather can be a bit unpredictable, you can still take measures to get your flower beds and yard ready, and even plant some early-blooming shrubs and annuals. Patricia Colwell, a manager at Rosedale Nurseries in Hawthorne, says to make sure the ground and beds are dry to begin with, by picking up any debris, raking, and pruning dead branches from your summer-flowering shrubs.

“To get color early, you can cut your spring branches, bring them inside and put them in water,” says Colwell. “The warmer they get, the more buds will be forced to bloom.” She suggests doing this with crab apple, magnolia, and forsythia.

In addition, you can also start to plant some shrubs and trees to maximize the color and interest in your yard. As long as the ground is dry and you can dig in, Colwell suggests the following for March planting:

	Pansies They are typically the first plant to come out with colorful blooms this time of year.
Forsythia Those bright, yellow bushes that pop up at the first sign of spring.
	Witch Hazel Offering up fiery embers of flowers, witch hazel can produce blooms, even in the low winter sun.
Winter Hazel Similar to witch hazel, winter hazel has small, yellow blooms that hang like bells and tend to bloom in March in our area (depending on the weather).
	Amelanchier Trees These types of trees offer four seasons of interest, but in the spring, their showy white, starlike blooms are the most striking.
Redbud Trees Vibrant, pink blooms burst from this small tree, sometimes well before the leaves themselves.