Christmas is coming! Would you like to turn your garden into a magical place with festive lights and decorations? But before splashing out on outdoor Christmas decorations, don’t forget to fix up your garden. Even the brightest lights will be overshadowed by a neglected green space. So let's see what you can do to fix up the garden before installing outdoor lights.
Clean up and trim the lawn
If you decide to illuminate your garden path with lighting chains, your lawn should be perfectly tidy: clear of leaves, debris and properly mowed.
Contrary to popular belief, grass needs cutting even in winter. But since it grows more slowly in this season due to the harsh climate, you should keep it long enough to oxygenate the plants and soil.
To this end, before taking out the lawnmower it is important to clear the ground of leaves using a blower. We suggest the BV 300 hand-held model, which is perfect for domestic chores like this: its low-vibration motor helps to reduce noise emissions, ensuring comfort and manoeuvrability during any task.
After raking up leaf litter on larger lawns, don't forget to turn the air jet towards paths and flowerbeds. You can also finish the edges of the lawn around kerbs and walls, helping you to clear the way for your brushcutter. Don’t have one? If you are thinking of buying one, opt for an electric trimmer: high-performance and quiet running, it will make cleaning up that much easier.
After cleaning, you can finally go to town with outdoor Christmas decorations. Our tips? In addition to conventional pathway lighting posts, you could illuminate the way to your front door with LED lanterns and candles, or place a pair of luminous reindeer or angel figurines on the grass or beside the door.
Thin out the branches of your fir tree
Have you already decided which tree will be your outdoor Christmas tree? Great.
Before dressing it up with glittery decorations and sparkling lights, do some light pruning to tidy up the foliage. If the tree is small, all you will need are chain-resistant gloves, saws and loppers.
In the case of larger trees—only if you can use a chainsaw professionally and are proficient at tree-climbing—you can equip yourself with a suitable harness and protective clothing and start trimming with a medium-power chainsaw such as the GS 440. Alternatively, you can use a telescopic pruner with adjustable head and extendable pole, allowing you to reach branches up to 5 metres above the ground.
Make oblique cuts without leaving any exposed stubs, then finish the cut with shears. Remember that pruning conifers is a very delicate job that requires caution and precision. The cuts shouldn’t be too drastic or invasive, or they risk shortening the life of the tree.
Our advice would therefore be to shorten only the branches of the first crown and not to touch the upper sections, especially the top: cutting it off would create problems for the entire plant, besides leaving you with nothing to place your tree topper on.
When you feel that your pine has regained its natural pyramid shape, you can proceed to the decorations. An outdoor tree usually requires fewer lights than an indoor one. A pretty light string will be more than enough to illuminate it for Christmas.
There are also lots of modular light strings on the market, which are handy because they can be easily assembled in a few steps without the need for an electrician. In addition, if one of the wires breaks, it can be replaced without having to change all the others and re-install everything from scratch.
If you want to add decorations, choose shiny and hanging ones so that they reflect the light and allow any snowfall to slide off onto the ground.
Cut hedges
Cleaning the garden at Christmas is an excellent opportunity to give the hedges a trim.
You can tackle larger hedges quicker using an electric hedgetrimmer, which enables you to keep moving as you cut, before finishing off the job with secateurs and shears.
Blow away dead leaves and branches from the foliage to prevent them from drying out inside the canopy, before moving on to the decorations. To make your hedge more festive, drape an LED light net over it and choose weather-resistant decorations. Avoid anything made of paper or fabric — baubles and plastic figurines are a better solution.
