Courtesy: CHAT Newsroom

By Angela Kazmierczak

Colder spring delays landscaping

Apr 25, 2023 | 5:26 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB – This year, the winter season in Medicine Hat was a mix of both mild and cold temperatures. Now it looks as if spring has finally arrived, and temperatures are finally rising.

Still, this spring has brought more cold and snow than Blair Keith, the landscaper and owner of BL Lawn and Home Maintenance Limited, had anticipated.

“Last year we started about March 20th. The golf courses were open, people were watering their lawns, irrigation, everything was going as planned. But this year, everything is slower obviously with the longer winter. There’s not much we can do about the weather – just live with it and go day by day,” said Keith.

For Keith and his crew, it’s now catch up time, considering it isn’t until the end of April, a month later, that the soil is workable.

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“It just shortens up the season up a little bit, so because winter dragged on longer than we expected, we’re just going full blast right now and we have lots and lots of work ahead of us,” said Keith.

As for Corinne Hoffner, the manager of the Windmill Garden Centre and Butterfly House, she says the cold and rainy weather always makes for less customers, considering fewer people work in the yard.

As customers wait for more consistent and warmer temperatures, she says they’ll purchase planters, unless they have their own greenhouse to grow young plants. Overall, she still finds the temperatures and sales for April relatively similar to last year’s. Regardless of the weather though, people will wait until May to plant.

“The rule of thumb is usually Maylong weekend. Right, that is when you can do your planting. But, we’ve had after Maylong weekend a -3, so you still have to always check the weather,” said Hoffner.

Currently, people are preparing the soil in their gardens, rather than planting.

“We had a longer winter. Obviously everything was still dormant. Everything is starting to come up now. The birds are chirping, the sun is out. The weather has finally smartened up. Hopefully no more snow,” said Keith.