Garden Maintenance near you

Spring cleanup starts once beds have thawed and dried enough to walk on without compacting the soil. Matted leaves, winter debris and last year's perennial stems come off, edges are recut, and beds are weeded, topped with compost and mulched before weeds get going. It's also the time to spot winter damage and salt injury along the street and driveway.

Summer is about staying ahead: weeding before weeds set seed, deadheading, staking tall perennials, watering new plantings during dry spells within local rules, and watching for pests and disease. Fall cleanup removes diseased foliage and spent annuals, protects tender plants and gets hoses and containers ready for winter.

Fall cleanup doesn't have to leave beds bare. Leaving some healthy perennial stems and seed heads standing over winter gives native bees and other pollinators hollow stems to shelter in and gives birds seeds to eat. Those stems can be cut back in spring once the weather warms.

Most of a gardener's time goes into a handful of recurring tasks. Done regularly, they keep beds looking tended with far less effort than a once-a-year rescue.

A garden produces a steady stream of trimmings, spent plants and leaves, and much of it can be composted on site. A mix of green material, such as fresh clippings, and brown material, such as dry leaves, breaks down into compost that goes back on the beds, and shredded leaves make a free mulch.

What can't be composted at home goes to municipal yard waste collection, which most cities run on set dates with rules on containers and bundles; Montreal, for one, doesn't accept plastic bags. Keep diseased plants, weeds that have gone to seed and invasive species out of the home compost, since a backyard pile rarely gets hot enough to destroy them.

Pesticide rules cover flower beds and vegetable gardens as well as lawns. Ontario's cosmetic pesticides ban limits gardens to products whose active ingredients all appear on the province's Allowable List, with health and safety exceptions such as poison ivy and giant hogweed. In Quebec, the Pesticides Management Code bars the highest-risk pesticides from lawns, trees, shrubs, vegetable gardens and flowerbeds, and municipalities such as Montreal add their own bans. Ask any gardener which products they plan to use, and expect hand weeding, mulch and low-risk options first.

Watering is regulated too. In Montreal, automatic systems may run only from 3 to 6 a.m. and portable sprinklers from 8 to 11 p.m., on even or odd days matching the address, and many other cities publish summer schedules they can tighten during a heat wave or shortage. Watering deeply at the base of plants, early in the day, and keeping beds mulched let a garden get by with less.

Some garden escapes are more than a nuisance. Giant hogweed, a very tall perennial with broad umbrella-shaped clusters of white flowers, has sap that causes severe burns when skin that has touched it is exposed to light. Ontario warns that painful blisters appear within 48 hours, and Quebec notes that the sap's toxins are activated by sunlight and by artificial UV light. If sap gets on your skin, wash it well with soap and water and keep the area out of the sun; if it gets in an eye, rinse it immediately and see a doctor.

Never cut or pull giant hogweed bare-armed. Provincial guidance calls for waterproof gloves, long sleeves, long pants and eye protection, and Ontario recommends hiring a professional. No part of the plant should be composted, and Ontario says not to burn it; both provinces describe bagging cut plants and leaving the bags in the sun before disposal. In Quebec, its sale and cultivation are prohibited as of June 4, 2026 under the new regulation on invasive exotic plant species, which also covers buckthorn, as the hedge trimming page explains.

A regular gardener visits every week or two through the growing season, which keeps weeds from getting ahead, catches pests and disease early and lets one person learn your garden. It suits large or densely planted yards, owners who travel in summer, and gardens that need to look good all season.

Seasonal visits, typically a spring cleanup, a summer tune-up or two and a fall cleanup, suit smaller or low-maintenance gardens and owners who enjoy the day-to-day care themselves. Many homeowners start with seasonal visits and add regular care once they see how fast weeds return in June.