Quick Tips to a Fine Landscape
Personal opinion: Fall is the best time for landscaping upgrades. We gardeners have more time to devote to things now, and so do the nursery professionals to whom we look for our help.
My suggestions learned from decades in this business…
In all the years I’ve been helping gardeners upgrade their surroundings, I’ve seen a lot of great landscapes. And, predictably, I’ve seen a few magnificent misses. Here are things I think might help you get right to the finish line of a landscape you’ll love.
• Emphasize the focal points. Whether it’s the front door or a main spot of the backyard, draw viewers’ eyes toward it. Create a visual “funnel.” Plant color near it. Make it stand out.
• Widen the beds. I see so many beds that are inappropriately under-sized for the houses they attend. Large two-story homes deserve grand, sweeping beds 6 to 12 or even 15 ft. wide. It’s all called “scale,” and it reflects off the proportions of the house to the landscape just as furniture does to the inside of the building.
• Add in some curves. Nature rarely does things in straight lines. If you want a landscape to look natural, you’ll want to develop those beds in long, sweeping curves and plant in clusters and groupings. That assumes, of course, that you’re not styling some highly formal design. That’s a different set of circumstances.
• Don’t worry about symmetry. Very few houses are symmetrical, that is, front door in the middle, with windows and walls identical to either side. As a result, your landscape shouldn’t be symmetrical, either. Choose different plant types and different arrangements. Maybe tie it all together with one common groundcover, but don’t worry about making it look like a mirror image.
• Avoid highly sheared plants. Once again, nature doesn’t produce plants in globes and squares, and unless we have a rigidly formal garden, we shouldn’t attempt to do that, either. It’s hard to make it look natural, and if anything goes wrong, the entire dream, can become a nightmare.
• Don’t draw attention to ugly parts of the garden. We all have them: gas meters, fire hydrants, valve boxes, tree trunks – you name it. Things that we’d rather not have in our landscapes. Wise gardeners ignore them. They let viewers’ eyes overlook them. That’s better than highlighting them with circular beds around them or pots hanging from them. Keep it all simple. You don’t decorate the toilet or water heater. Just leave them alone. Your guests will think nothing of them.