Landscape Design & Installation Advice | KD Landscape

5 Tips to Maintaining Your Container Gardens in Illinois

Written by Kevin Manning | Jun 28, 2022 1:58:44 PM

Looking for a way to spruce up your patio or front entryway in your Greater Chicago area home landscape?

Container gardens could be just the right additions to bring some pops of color and pizazz to your residence – bumping up your curb appeal and creating some great texture and intrigue in your otherwise boring space. You can envision two urns overflowing with contrasting shades adding depth to your front door. Or an array of pots giving your patio a warm, welcoming feeling.

But you can’t have beautiful pots full of bountiful blooms without proper container garden maintenance.

While you may think outdoor potted plants are easy to create and keep tidy and pretty, it actually takes some planning and care to ensure they stay healthy and deliver the good looking landscape additions you're after.

Let’s look at some ways you can keep your outdoor potted plants growing and glowing in your Chicagoland home landscape.

Top 5 Tips for Maintaining Container Gardens

Container garden maintenance isn’t rocket science, but there are quite a few mistakes you can make that can really mess up the look and feel you’re going for with your potted plants.

The goal is to learn what your containers need to thrive.

Here are some of our best tips for maintaining container gardens.

1. Proper Watering is Crucial

Correct watering is probably the one area where outdoor potted plant care can go most awry.

Forgetting to water your container plants can be easy to do when you get super busy. But your plants don’t know you’re busy, and they need water for adequate health.

There are a lot of options here you can utilize to help water your containers regularly. Tying them into your drip irrigation system where possible is a great way to keep regular watering on a schedule.

Self-watering containers that only need weekly watering is another option. This uses water that collects in a reservoir to be available to your plants when they need it.

2. Fertilization Is Also Important For Container Garden Maintenance

Weekly fertilization is a key part of maintaining container gardens.

When you hire a landscape company in the Greater Chicago area like KD Landscape to care for your potted plants, fertilization is included in your maintenance package, so your plants get the boost they need for peak performance.

3. Remember To Keep Wildlife Away

Deer can be a nuisance in your garden, and they aren’t great for your containers either.

They like to come by and nibble on all of their favorite flowers, and then they leave your pots looking chewed up and empty.



A deer repellent can certainly help keep grazing deer away.

A container garden maintenance service can help ensure deer and other pests aren’t making your containers look bland.

4. Deadheading To Promote Blooms

Another important service as part of container garden maintenance is deadheading.

This is the process of cutting back dead parts of your plants to encourage more blooms. When this is done properly and regularly, you’ll see fuller blooms and even re-blooms of some flowers.

5. Cleaning Things Up

Keeping your plants looking neat and tidy is another task involved in maintaining container gardens.

You’ll find your plants drop petals or debris, making your patio or front entryway look messy. Cleaning up that debris is a part of the chores needed to keep containers looking their best throughout the growing seasons.

Let Us Worry About Your Outdoor Potted Plant Care in Naperville, Elmhurst, and Hinsdale, IL

Container gardens are great additions to any Chicagoland home landscape. The bright colors and gorgeous vessels add architectural elements that liven up your outdoor spaces.

While you might be able to handle container garden maintenance on your own, it can be overwhelming and easy to forget some of these tips before it’s too late, and your containers take a hit.

Let KD Landscape take this worry off of your plate. We can bring our many years of expertise in container gardening in the Greater Chicago area to the table and give you containers that look lovely all year long.

Ready to see how KD Landscape can transform your Naperville, Elmhurst, or Hinsdale, IL landscape with container gardening services? We’d love to share our design and installation expertise with you. Get started today with a free consultation. Together, we can prepare containers that wow you.