Easy Lawn Care Tips

Get a greener, healthier lawn with less work!

Reduce yard chores and create a better lawn and gardens by following this expert advice, including establishing easy-mow borders and walks, using preemergence crabgrass preventers, setting your mower to the proper cutting height, mulching around trees and more.

Tip 1: Add mulch to protect trees and avoid trimming
Clipping the grass around trees by hand is time-consuming. By adding a 4-in.-deep ring of mulch, you eliminate that chore. You'll also better protect newly planted trees and bushes. Nursery pros report that the most common reason young trees die is that lawn mowers and weed whips damage the bark. For a neater look, surround the mulch with a plastic, metal or brick border.

Learn seven more tips to reduce yard work »

Landscaping Tips for Your Backyard

Pro building tips for paths and walls

Building brick paths and stone walls creates a magical landscape. It's also hard work. These tips will help you work smarter and faster and they'll help ensure that your paths and walls look as good in 20 years as they do the day you finish.

Tip 1: Snap lines on the sand
You can stretch a string between stakes to create a layout line for setting bricks, but simply snapping a chalk line in the sand is quicker, plus you don't have a string in the way. With layout lines snapped on the sand, laying bricks is faster and easier. The chalk won't stick to dry sand, so you may have to mist the sand with water before snapping lines. Then snap layout lines directly on the sand using a standard carpenter's chalk line reel.

Build better paths and walls quicker and easier »

Tips for Easier Gardening

Tips that will help you plant, water and weed faster

If you love gardening but your life is a busy place, you're going to love this batch of great gardening tips that will help you plant, weed and water your garden more quickly.

Tip 1: Munch-proof your flower bulbs
Keep hungry critters from snacking on your freshly planted flower bulbs by staking poultry netting over the bed. You can either remove the cloth in the early spring or let plants grow through the holes and leave it throughout the growing season.

Save time so you can stop and smell your roses »

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