The City Gardener: Spring clean-up: A journey, not a destination

Patience is a virtue, when it comes to getting your garden ready for another year.

Published Apr 17, 2026  •  3 minute read

In Martha Uniacke Breen’s early May garden, the arrival of species tulips, grape hyacinths and early Darwin tulips mean that spring is really here at last.

What a spring we’ve been having! One day it’s warm and sunny, the birds are singing like crazy and your garden seems to call for you — then the clouds close in, and snowflakes are flying around in the wind.

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By this time of year, we city gardeners are fairly itching to get out there and get to work. But I’m sorry to tell you: step away from the rake and the leaf bag. Just for a little longer. I promise.

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If you covered your beds last fall with mulch, leaf litter and other compost materials, it’s still adding plenty of benefits to your garden, and you don’t want to lift it too soon.

Besides, beneficial pollinators and other insects (think ladybugs, bees, butterflies and others) overwintering in the material will be lost if you consign them to the compost pile or leaf bag before they’re ready to hatch. And a lot of important species are bordering on endangered as it is.

In any case, you really shouldn’t expose your soil to the drying and compacting effects of wind and rain until temperatures are consistently above about 10 degrees — which, depending on your growing zone, is somewhere around the end of April.

But when the sun is shining sweetly and it’s shaping up to be a fine day to work outside, there are actually some things you can start doing now.

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Week 1: Remove litter, broken branches, and other debris from your lawn and flowerbeds by hand. If you spot any weeds rearing their ugly little heads, it’s relatively easy to get them now, while they’re still young and the ground is soft.

If your lawn still feels soft and spongy underfoot, don’t walk on it any more than necessary. Any matted leaves that have ended up on the lawn can be lightly (LIGHTLY!) raked to prevent them smothering the grass underneath.

Shrubs and trees are fine to prune now, before they start growing in earnest. But to be honest, you can do this as needed all season long.

Use a small hand rake or your fingers to gently move the mulch an inch or two back from emerging spring bulbs. Most bulbs are fine growing up straight through the mulch, and can handle a late frost or even a spring snowstorm. I just find it’s easier to start the mulch removal process now, when the bulbs are still just little spires.

Week 2 and 3: I do the main cleanup over at least a couple of weekends, simply because it’s the most labour-intensive part of the job. Gently lift up last year’s mulch and put it in the compost (or leaf bags).

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Because a lot of my beds are very full of newly emerging perennials by this point, I tend to do this by hand or using a hand rake, instead of a regular rake. Once perennials are starting to show new growth, trim and compost last year’s dead growth as you go.

Once you’ve removed the old mulch, add about two inches of fresh compost, topsoil (black earth) or triple mix. This gives the whole garden a nice head start. I like to scrape it into the soil a bit with a hand fork, but unless the soil underneath is very compacted, you don’t really have to; earthworms will do the work for you.

Finally, add a top layer of about two to three inches of mulch, being sure to push it back an inch or two from the stems of plants. This serves two purposes: it prevents the chance of rotting tender new shoots, and it creates a little moat that directs rainwater to the plant’s roots. If the garden is dry, give it a good soaking.

By the time I’ve finished these chores, chances are the season is well underway, and I’m already thinking about what I’m going to plant – but we’ll get into that next time. Happy spring!

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