You unlock the side gate in Gilford on the first warm Saturday of May and the controller in the garage clicks on at six in the morning the way it always has. Along the shoreline in Meredith, a row of arborvitae that looked tidy in April now hides the rotor that used to clear it cleanly. On a backyard in Center Harbor, a fresh ring of dark mulch around a young maple has buried the spray head that watered the lawn last summer. None of those scenes is a moral failing. They are May. Plants grew. Mulch arrived. The controller did not change with them, and that is the work you do this weekend before the watering system trains itself into a fight you did not pick.
This guide is for homeowners across the Greater Lakes Region who want sprinklers, mulch, and the first serious push of new growth to stay friends through May rather than spend the rest of the season fighting each other. Belknap Landscape has handled property maintenance, landscape construction, and design and permitting across Lake Winnipesaukee shoreline lots and inland yards in Gilford and Laconia since 1988. Read this once with the controller manual and a hose in view. Then walk the beds slowly with the phone in hand, because dated photos help us more than long phone descriptions do.
Confirm Programs Match May Plant Reality
Open each zone and watch arcs with the leaves on the shrubs, not only the turf. New growth lowers effective throw faster than spreadsheets suggest. A rotor that cleared a hosta in April may water only its own foliage in May. A spray head that had a clean path past an azalea in late winter may now hit four feet of buds and lose half its coverage to the inside of the canopy. Walk every zone for the first five minutes of its run and stand where the head can see you. If a head buries under fresh mulch, pull the mulch back before you change run times. Programmed minutes are not a fix for a head that cannot reach the lawn.
Write down which zones disappointed you. A photo of the bed with the head circled is worth more on a call than a paragraph describing it. If you already booked our property maintenance rhythm, ask the crew to verify head clearance on the next visit and to flag any rotor that has been masked by spring growth so you are not paying for water that lands on a shrub the spray cannot escape.
Mulch Depth Versus Spray and Bark Wash
Fine mulch moves with spray. After one heavy watering week you will see bare rings around the heads where the bark has washed away. That is not a controller problem. That is a soil and depth conversation. Top dress should support roots, not plug low heads or pile bark against young trunks where moisture invites rot. Aim for two to three inches at the lawn edge and taper to nothing within an inch of any trunk. If a stone edging sheds toward the turf because the bed grade rose this spring, reset the edge before you blame the controller for puddles that are really runoff.
Shoreline-adjacent beds still belong in design and permitting when grade aims toward water. New Hampshire shoreland rules are real. They do not stop maintenance, but they shape what regrading is possible without a conversation, and the conversation goes faster when we start it before equipment shows up on the truck.
Maintenance Visits Versus Construction Triggers
Weekly property maintenance handles a long list of May irrigation work without ever opening a trench. Adjusting head heights, clearing mulch volcanoes off rotors, cleaning clogged spray screens, reporting cracked risers, swapping bad solenoids, and resetting tilted heads that the plow nudged in March all belong on a maintenance visit. The cost stays predictable. The work happens in the same hour as the rest of your rhythm.
Other work belongs in scoped landscape construction. Regrading a section of yard that has slumped since the house was built. Adding new valve boxes for zones that should never have shared their original valve. Trenching across a driveway to extend coverage to a side bed that was an afterthought when the system was installed. Those are construction conversations, and they go on a separate scope. Send a video of the zone running so the estimator can hear the clicks and see the arcs without driving out three times before quoting.
Tree Skirts and Spray Angles That Need a Pruning Plan
Low branches that cleared rotors in April may bat the spray in May. A skirt of new growth on a young maple along a parking court in Wolfeboro can fold a fan of water back on itself and waste the entire stroke. Forcing higher pressure to push past the foliage is the wrong fix. It stresses the head, soaks the bark, and starves the turf elsewhere on the zone.
Flag those limbs for our tree and plant health team. A clean reduction cut a few inches above the spray plane usually restores throw without changing the program at all. The cut belongs in the season anyway. Pairing it with the irrigation check saves a separate visit later.
What to Send Belknap Before the Visit
The packet that makes the first visit fastest is short. The controller brand and model. A photo of the controller face plate. A list of the zones that disappointed you last summer with a one-line note for each. Photos of any heads you already suspect, with a finger pointing at the problem so the angle is unambiguous. Date the photos by sending them within a day of taking them. If you have an irrigation as-built map from the original install, attach it. We will not duplicate paid work you already own.
Belknap Landscape has handled water and turf across the Lakes Region since 1988. The first dollar fixes the root problem rather than the symptom on the other end of the zone. Contact us when you are ready and bring the short list. May rewards the homeowner who sequences a controller check with honest mulch depth and a plant-growth pass in the same weekend, and the rest of the season repays that hour many times over.