You want to put a new coat of paint on your house to brighten it up and boost the curb appeal, but what happens to all of your prized plants? Paint is toxic, and it can cause a lot of damage. That’s not to mention the damage any painting company can accidentally do when they come in with their scaffolding, ladders, and other paint gear. However, there are several things you can do to preserve your plants and get your home ready for a new coat of paint.
- Move Your Potted Plants
One of the quickest and easiest things you can do before the paint crew shows up is to move any of your potted plants away or into the house. If you move them away, make sure they’re still in their preferred growing conditions. You can group them together around your yard, or you can bring them indoors in a sunny location and let them be until it’s time to move them back when the project finishes.
- Remove Climbing Plants or Ivy
Yes, ivy and other climbing plants look nice attached to your home, but they can actually cause damage to the exterior. Before anyone gets there to paint, you’ll have to remove them. If you’re really attached to them, you could save several cuttings and start them on trellises inside your home or in a nice location in your yard. They’ll eventually grow and start climbing again, and you can put them up against your home to encourage them to climb.
- Wrap Bushes and Shrubs
First, trim away any dead, broken, or dying parts of your trees or shrubs by the house to leave healthy growth. Once you do, you can wrap your bushes and shrubs with a protective layer of burlap or landscape fabric. You want to secure this in place with tape, rope, or twine to ensure it anchors in place and doesn’t accidentally slide off with the wind or the crews moving around. When they finish painting and pack up, you can uncover these areas.
- Cover Your Flower Beds
Paint spray and splatter is a side effect of taking on a large-scale project like painting the exterior of your home. You want to take time to protect your flower beds or vegetable gardens if it’s not practical to dig them up and move them. If they have fences around them, you can drape landscape fabric over them to provide a barrier. If not, you can lightly put burlap or landscape fabric around and over your flower beds before using stakes or rocks to hold it in place. If you use white fabric, it’ll make it easy to avoid stepping on it.
- Trim Greenery
Ideally, you’ll have at least eight-inches between any greenery and your home, but a full foot is often the best way to go. To do this, you will have to trim and prune back any shrubs or plants that are too close to your home. This will help protect them from the paint, and it’ll also give the painters more than enough room to work without stepping on anything.
Contact Evergreen Landscaping
We can help get your yard ready for exterior house painting. We can give you advice or tips on how to protect your precious plants and shrubs. Contact us to set up an appointment today.
Setting aside all of our plants first before painting the house is a really good tip that I think we should follow. If we do that, we don’t have to worry about them getting all messy and intoxicating them with paint, so it’s best if we work on that early. Once we’re done, only then will I find an exterior painting expert for the project and get started.