As you start re-doing your landscape

If you’ve been musing over changes you’d like to make in your landscape, ask yourself 5 basic questions.

Why?
Why are you doing this? Is it because you have overgrown shrubs? Are you seeking space for a garden or room for a greenhouse? Maybe you need to rework parts of your lawn to improve drainage, or it could be that a retaining wall is in order to make more efficient use of a hillside. Those are just examples. Make a list of the things that have been bothering you and determine how best you can correct them. If you can’t answer “Why?” you probably don’t need to be doing it.

How?
Once you’ve established your goals, how are you going to get there? What work will you be doing yourself, and where will you need outside help? How much is it going to cost, and how will you fit it into the budget?

Let’s use bed design as one example. How will you plan them? Formally straight or naturally sweeping? There’s a place for both in good landscape design, but you need to figure how best new beds should be designed.

Think through bed widths. Many gardeners undershoot and develop beds that are too narrow for the sizes of their houses. Use large, sweeping curves extending 7 to 12 ft. out from the corners of your house, perhaps even wider for 2-story homes.

Plan for bed preparation. Texas soils often call for major amendments, and organic matter is usually the answer. Be generous if you’re preparing for short shrubs, groundcovers, and color. Use compost, sphagnum peat moss, finely ground bark mulch, and well-rotted manure along with an inch of expanded shale. Rototill to 10-12 in.

Where?
If you’re looking for landscaping help, start with your local independent retail nursery. They may have a landscape designer on staff. Many nursery professionals are adept at working up simple landscaping projects, although if you need help with something like a retaining wall, overhead structure, bridge, or unusual concrete work, you’ll probably want someone with training in the appropriate fields.

When it comes to getting things planted, the nursery that sells you the plants may have a team that offers that service. Or you may opt to hire a landscape contractor who works in your area. These folks seldom have storefronts, so the best way to find them is to check local references. Ask your friends and neighbors for referrals. Look for members of trade organizations like the Texas Nursery and Landscape Association. See who’s active in your local Chamber.

Which?
Which varieties of trees and shrubs should you choose? In which container size?

Choose plants that are adapted to your local soils and climatic conditions. It’s my considered opinion that the most recent USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Maps (2012 and 2023) are not as accurate for Texas as the one from 35 years ago (1990).

Plant larger shrubs, say from 10- and 20-gallon pot sizes. That gives them a greater margin of error during dry times, and it allows us to space them at the recommended distances without having a landscape that looks under-planted. With trees, mid-sized trees are affordable and they take off well. If you need to match mature trees in your landscape, however, larger specimens are certainly available.

When?
Many people have the mistaken idea that all landscaping must be done in the spring. Fact is, plants set out during the winter are better established when summer blasts in.

In fact, if you have plants that have outgrown the spaces you have available for them, you may need to dig and relocate them, and that work absolutely must be done during the winter, while they’re dormant.

Winter is also the time to sit down with a professional planner. Like anyone in horticulture, designers get swamped in the springtime. They’ll have a lot more time to work with you now, and that will also give you time to get many of the “hardscaping” (walks, patios, gazebos, retaining walls, etc.) work done before you start planting.