Planning Landscaping - Avoid My 3 Mistakes

One year after hastily planting upwards of 50 shrubs, trees and assorted leafy green whatnots in the barren yard of the house we just bought, I was uprooting 25% of them and transplanting them elsewhere. The second year, another 25% were moved to spots in the yard deemed better. The third year, well, you guessed it. And you know what? Transplanting got old after just the first few fights with buried root balls. And after year 3, when some of the bushes had grown to the size of Honda Fits, the job had become back-breaking. All of which leads to the first thing I should have done in landscaping... 

1) Have a plan.

I figured, nature doesn’t have a plan. Why do I need one? Well, it turns out nature does have a plan--survival of the fittest. The strong overtake the weak. And the concept of “aesthetically pleasing” is a concept unknown to nature. We homeowners, on the other hand, want all of our plants to survive and thrive–strong and weak, hand in hand singing Kum By Ya as the focal-point birch clump sways us gently on hammocks, our lips stained with Kool-Aid. And when we open our eyes from that August nap, we want to see rolling, flowing waves of plant life and envious neighbors. It’s not going to happen without a plan.

In planning landscaping, start with a paper and pencil sketch. Outline your lot, home and driveway, and begin doodling some ideas. Sketch out flowerbeds–do you want curved, flowing boundaries or crisp, formal lines and angles to the beds? Freestanding clusters of shrubs, grasses and flowers–where? And trees–evergreen or deciduous, standing alone or clustered or incorporated into a bed? Need some ideas? Need to see how others have made landscaping work for them?

Take a drive and pick out yards that you find especially well landscaped–take notes or even pictures. Hint: leave the telephoto lens at home to avoid neighbors calling 911. Better yet, ask permission of the homeowner first. You’ll likely get permission, a gleaming smile, and a detailed dissertation of each plant. Find more ideas in books and magazines. Since my early fiasco, I’ve taken to clipping photos from magazines and have amassed a collection of self-help landscaping books from the likes of Home Depot and Lowes and Amazon.com, providing not only relevant photographs and in-depth planning guides, but critical help in identifying individual plant for your climate zone and preferred level of maintenance. Of these,  Complete Home Landscaping : Designing, Constructing, Planting by Catriona Tudor Erler, is about the best I've seen. 320 pages covering every conceivable aspect of landscaping--from developing a plan to walls and fences, ponds and pools, landscape lighting, and deck and patio elements. Every gardener or would-be gardener should have this book on their shelf.

If software is more your thing, look into Better Homes and Gardens Landscaping and Deck Designer 8.0 [Newest Version]. This is a powerful software package from the trusted folks at Better Homes and Gardens that puts every imaginable tool at your fingertips for designing outdoor projects from landscaping to decks and patios, sprinkler systems, water features, etc. You can import your own photos, choose and arrange plants from a catalog of over 3500, and estimate project costs. This is great stuff for experimenting with design ideas--see what a single or multi-level deck would look like coming off your back door; see what a brick or stone patio would look like before you break your back; build fencing and arrange outdoor furniture in 3D graphics.

But I digress. In sum, have a plan, or have a shovel in your hand for the next five years.

2) Don’t crowd those new plants.

Every container plant from your favorite nursery or garden center will have attached a little plastic tag identifying the plant and offering planting suggestions. Treat those suggestions as gold. Especially the spacing suggestions. To wit, the three Blue Pfitzer junipers purchased by yours truly and spaced two feet apart in a front flower bed when the tags said to space them 5-6 feet apart. My thinking was: but they’re so tiny. And they looked ridiculously tiny in that big old empty flower bed. So I pushed them together and two years later I was digging up the middle one and planting it further out and two years after that I was digging up all three because they had collectively outgrown the flower bed. I threw’em in the ground along the back fence and now they’re trying to push the fence down. No offense to you Blue Pfitzer propagators, but your junipers are brutal.

I wish I could say that the junipers were the only plants on which I ignored the spacing requirements. Sadly, in my zeal to fill up a yard I ignored tags left and right. Which accounts for 75% of the subsequent transplanting that has taken place to date.

So here are some words to the wise: Plants grow. Some plants grow mightily. So space plants accordingly from the start. For good tips on planting, as well as a source of hard-to-find container plants suited for your climate zone and shipped worry-free to your door, try Nature Hills Nursery, Inc. Punch in your zip code (upper right hand corner) to find your planting zone, then browse or use their "Plant Finder" (left margin) to focus in on your needs.

3) Landscape planning - remember, you still gotta mow.

Unless your plan calls for a bush or flower on every square foot of your lot, remember that the remaining lawn needs maintaining. One of the early mistakes I made was not allowing for ease of mowing. I positioned low-hanging trees in the middle of the yard, created a few too many freestanding clumps of this and that, and fashioned flower beds that made following along with a mower especially difficult. Soft green grass is a lovely thing and I’m a big fan. But remember when planning landscaping, you’ll be mowing that grass every week. And the older you get the less amused you’ll be while doing the limbo under low tree branches.

David Alan Carter is a homeowner, budding landscaper and freelance writer who lives each of his articles–and has the aching back and purple thumb to prove it.