I have a newfound appreciation for nice yards after the past year.  The truth is, in the past I never really even noticed the “boring” plants like shrubs, groundcover and evergreens.  I certainly didn’t know much about planning a yard or landscaping project other than to know what I aesthetically liked, and even that wasn’t well-formed.  When we first moved in, I assumed that the “front yard project” would be something simple and straightforward that would require a bit of digging, moving around some of our inherited plants (mostly gangly roses and henpecked looking azaleas) and a couple of trips to the local garden center, something I could easily tackle and check off my To Do list.  Well, here it is, a year later and I’m still trying to check it off.

This past weekend was filled with digging to fix some mistakes that we’ve made in our front yard over the past year.  So I thought I’d commemorate it by sharing some valuable lessons I’ve learned:

1. Check out (and improve) your soil before doing anything.  I’m not saying you have to buy one of those fancy soil testing kits, but get to know your soil before even planning.  If the soil even remotely sucks, start improving it.  We didn’t think to do this and that’s how we ended up where we were this weekend.  As an experiment in the spring, I had improved one little shady patch’s soil and we could see that it made a dramatic difference.  Since everything else was languishing, I decided that all the original beds that I had planted (well, the plants that hadn’t died already) had to get uprooted so that I could start over.  Our soil has a lot of clay and to improve it, we added sand, some fake peat moss (the more ecofriendly coir), and some nice topsoil and mixed it all up to about a depth of a foot and a half.  If you have the time and muscles, then a two foot depth plus would be even better.

2. Acknowledge what’s realistic.  In our case, it was coming to terms with our own laziness.  There’s no way we’re ever going to remember to water our plants everyday in the dead of summer; the timer I bought for the hose had user-interface issues and never would work; and  we didn’t have time to look into drip irrigation…so all of the plants we bought are drought-tolerant (though let’s just pretend that the real driving factor is that we are incredibly environmentally sensitive and into xeriscaping!).  Likewise, I’m not really a gardening enthusiast, so I had to choose plants that were hardy and don’t need too much babying.  I just couldn’t see myself digging up plants in the fall to overwinter, or running out with tarps to protect them in January.

3. Observe the light.  Places that we thought were sunny turned out to be not that sunny, and on the flipside, shady places weren’t nearly as shady as we thought it would be.  It may pay to place a potted plant and put it in its potential home  for a couple of weeks and just see how it responds to the light before planting/investing in it (or plants with similar light condition needs).

4. Recognize that there’s a huge mismatch between landscaping/gardening books and your local gardening center/nursery.  I kept checking books out of the library and they would make all kinds of plant recommendations, and I would go to the nursery and none of them would be in stock (and forget about asking someone on a weekend, it was always a challenge to find someone to assist you).  In the end, for me the lazy/ambivalent gardener, it was easier to just go to the nursery and choose from what was actually available and in stock rather than invest too much time into planning.

5.  On the other hand, garden center staff, even when you can find them, tend not to be very knowledgable or helpful, so you may still need some books to do some basic research.  What I found was that I would do is a) go to nursery to create a shortlist of plants that might work b) go back home to read up on the plants (see if they are invasive, what conditions they like etc) and then c) go back to the nursery to buy them.  The first time we made a massive shrub purchase for hiding the retaining wall in the front yard, the guy who “helped” us recommended plants that were ill-suited for our conditions–plus he managed to sell us what were essentially invasive, ugly weeds (stupid Scotch Broom that I just recently tore out)!

6. Don’t buy your plants all at once.  I’ve found that the garden center’s inventory changes seasonally.  They tend to stock up on whatever’s just about to bloom so that it will sell well – so if you buy all of your perennials at once, you’re going to end up with something that only has color for about 2-3 weeks out of the year (yes, it happened to me – almost all of my plants in one bed now bloom in May and look pretty pathetic the rest of the year!  See #9).  If you’re not terribly knowledgable about plants like me, then it may make sense to fill your yard out incrementally so that it has multi-seasonal interest and you also don’t have to do any special plant sleuthing (or heaven forbid, mail-order!) to find anything “out of season.”

7. Don’t overlook the boring plants.  This one was hard for me to accept.  I don’t really like those ho-hum “understory” plants and bushes but without them, things just don’t look right or filled in.  Plus, they are a consistent backdrop, especially if they are evergreen - reliable and without drama.  We went with some basics like Holly, California Lilac, and Heavenly Bamboo. 

8. Buy multiples of one type of plant.  Yikes, another hard one for me to come to terms with.  I couldn’t commit and wanted one of everything and let me tell you, that looks pretty horrible when you put them all together.  Buy at least three of each kind of plant/flower, especially if it’s small.  Things look better and more professional in clumps and clusters.  And for some reason, I prefer the look of an odd number of one variety too.

9. Annuals.  I get why people buy Annuals now – it’s because they flower and flower and flower.  I’m still not doing Annuals because I’m a low-maintanence kind of person and can’t be bothered with digging all the time, but I totally understand why they are usually part of the equation.  There are some Perennials that similarly work hard, so you may want to seek them out.  Or you may just want to find those Annuals that self-seed.

10. Timing is everything.  If you’re on a right budget or just want to experiment cheaply, I would highly recommend buying all of your plants in September.  Everything is on sale, usually between 50-85% off.  Find out when the first day of the sale is and hit it up then before the selection gets too shabby (and so you can fulfill #8 – you’ll need multiples!).  It’s a good time to plant because it’s not that hot outside and in a place like Vancouver, they will still have about 1.5-2 months to get settled in before the cold really hits.

11. If you don’t know what you’re really doing (ahem, me again), don’t even try to worry about an historically styled garden or yard.  I checked out a couple of books on Bungalow and Craftsman style yards, but to be honest, it was just too overwhelming and frilly — lots of gazing balls, high-end custom made fences, and formal garden design. 

12. Oh, and those “inherited” plants that came with the house?  In the end, we gave away because they just didn’t work for us and they too were all solos.  I felt bad about sending them on their way, but am coming to terms that it’s okay to move on to something new.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 22nd, 2008 at 6:42 pm and is filed under garden, landscaping, tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.