How to Care for New Landscaping: 5 Essential Tips for Northern Virginia Homeowners

Have you had new trees, shrubs, or plants installed at your Northern Virginia home? Proper care for new landscaping can be the difference between protecting your investment and wasting money.

It’s incredibly frustrating to see new plants turn brown, struggle, or maybe even die. After all, new landscaping isn’t cheap. It’s the care that’s invested in that plant material during the first year that will make all the difference. Getting a new landscape is just the beginning. Landscape investment protection boils down to how you care for it.

Jump to Section

• 1. Start with Proper Watering
• 2. Proper Mulching for Valuable Benefits
• 3. Monitoring for Pests and Diseases to Avoid Trouble
• 4. Protecting Plants from Other Problems
• 5. Following a Landscape Maintenance Schedule for Ongoing Success
• FAQs on Caring for New Shrubs, Trees, and Perennials
• Choosing Expert Landscape Care in Alexandria, Springfield & Arlington, VA

In this article, we’ll cover 5 landscape installation aftercare steps you should be taking for success.

Tip 1: Start with Proper Watering

Water is the lifeblood of all living things, and it’s certainly no different with plants. If you’ve installed new shrubs, trees, or other plants, make sure they're getting proper watering.

Here are a few new landscape watering tips.

Ample Water is Key

The truth is, these plants were getting a lot of TLC when they were being grown in a nursery, and it can be very traumatic when they’re first installed on your property. At a nursery, they were most likely watered daily, so to suddenly back off from that at a time when this plant material is becoming established in your landscape can add a lot of stress.

Of course, the exact amount of water your trees and shrubs need depends on factors like plant size, soil structure, and temperature. If Kingstowne Lawn & Landscape provides your new landscaping care, we’ll also offer watering recommendations.

Avoid Overwatering

Watering is often discussed in terms of being too scarce. But you can also water too much. What's confusing is that overwatered trees and shrubs can turn brown (just like underwatered trees and shrubs). This happens because the plant roots are drowning.

Usually, soil condition is a clue as to whether a shrub is being overwatered or underwatered. If the soil is dry and cracked, this can be a sign of underwatering. But if the soil is soggy (and maybe mushrooms are growing), your plant is receiving too much water.

Watering Correctly

In addition to using the right amount of water, make sure you’re watering correctly. There is no reason to water the foliage on your new trees or shrubs. It’s the roots that need the water.

Watering foliage can potentially cause disease problems for your trees and shrubs. Using a soaker hose is an effective way to water slowly and steadily at the base of your plants.

Tip 2: Proper Mulching for Valuable Benefits

Caring for newly planted trees, shrubs, and other plants should also involve mulching.

Homeowners often think of mulch in terms of aesthetics (and it certainly offers that). But mulch offers many important benefits that affect your plants' health. It acts as a barrier to protect your plants’ root systems, it helps retain soil moisture and stabilize temperature, and it can even suppress weed growth.

But if you mulch improperly, it can do more harm than good. Piling mulch up against a shrub or tree (often referred to as “volcano mulching”) can be incredibly problematic.

The problem with piling excessive mulch up against a plant’s trunk is that it can begin to cause bark rot. It can also encourage new root growth that eventually strangles the plant. This poor practice can also set your plants up for disease and pest problems.

To ensure your new landscaping gets off on the right foot, proper mulching is key.

Tip 3: Monitoring for Pests & Diseases to Avoid Trouble

New trees and shrubs, already stressed from adapting to their new landscape, can be prone to insect and disease problems. These can be devastating to a new plant, which is already using so much energy to establish itself in its new home.

Fortunately, there are solutions. A Plant Health Care program can help protect your plants against some of the most common pest and disease threats that we face in Northern VA. This includes some of the following that we see most often in our region.

• Japanese Beetles
• Scale insects
• Bagworms
• Spider Mites
• Aphids
• Lace Bugs
• Apple Scab
• Anthracnose
• and dozens of other issues!

To the untrained eye, early signs of pest or disease trouble might be hard to spot. But when you partner with professional landscape maintenance in Northern VA, you can feel confident that a close eye is being kept on your landscaping.

Tip 4: Protecting Plants from Other Problems

Before they're fully established, new plants can be especially vulnerable to other problems. Bumping a young tree with a mower, for instance, is going to be a lot more damaging because of thin bark and lower energy reserves.

Newly planted trees, shrubs, and perennials are also more susceptible to environmental stress. Transplant shock (moving a plant from the nursery to its new home) does reduce its ability to absorb water and nutrients. During this establishment period, you’re going to want to be extra careful with your new landscape. Common stressors for new plants include drought, soil conditions, and extreme weather.

Tip 5: Following a Landscape Maintenance Schedule for Ongoing Success

One of the best ways to set your new landscape up for success and protect your landscape investment is to follow a routine landscape maintenance schedule. Tasks like pruning, fertilization, and timely inspections by a landscape pro can help keep your new landscape healthy.

At Kingstowne Lawn & Landscape, our Pruning Plans are among our most popular maintenance plans because people love that they eliminate the worry. When you sign up for a plan, you get on the schedule and never have to give the ongoing pruning of your plants another thought!

As mentioned, we also offer Plant Health Care programs that include fertilization to feed your plants valuable nutrients, plus pest and disease monitoring and solutions to protect them from threats.

FAQs on Caring for New Shrubs, Trees, and Perennials

How do you care for new landscaping?

New landscaping care should include proper watering, mulching, and professional oversight.

What should you do after new landscaping is installed?

The primary goal after new landscaping is installed is to ensure that new trees, shrubs, and perennials survive transplant shock and establish healthy root systems. Proper, ongoing care during the first year is critical.

How long does it take new plants to establish?

The exact timing for a new tree, shrub, or plant to establish depends on its size and species. But the general rule is that it takes one full growing season for a plant to become established.

A larger shrub or tree might be closer to two years. You can generally tell that a new plant is becoming established when it pushes out vigorous new growth and is firmly anchored in the ground.

How can I protect my investment in new landscaping?

Regular landscape maintenance in Northern VA helps protect your landscape investment. This includes proper watering, mulching, fertilization, and future pruning.

What are the biggest mistakes homeowners make with new landscaping?

Most early mistakes we see with newly planted landscaping involve watering blunders. This includes both over- and under-watering. If you're ever unsure about landscape installation aftercare, ask your landscaper.

Choosing Expert Landscape Care in Alexandria, Springfield & Arlington, VA

Ultimately, you want to feel confident your new landscaping will survive and thrive. After all, it’s no small investment to pay for new trees and shrubs—now you want to see them succeed.

The key is to work with a landscaping company that can set you up for success.

At Kingstowne Lawn & Landscape, we handle plant installations and ongoing maintenance, and we’re serious about ensuring the homeowners we work with know what their new landscaping needs. In addition to valuable watering tips, we can offer our clients a Plant Health Care program, Pruning Plans, and Mulching Plans to set them up for success.

It all boils down to protecting your investment.

By investing in these services, you can ditch the worries and get back to spending time enjoying your beautiful new landscape.

If you’d like to discuss plant health care, pruning, or mulching for your landscape, request a quote, get your customized plan, and relax knowing that your plants are in good hands.