Seven steps for planning a new garden

When planning a garden, you have to consider a number of things, including the soil and sun. Because a yard is an ongoing development, don’t neglect either the short- or long- term planning. It shouldn’t be a burden, just make a list of ideas that come to you or collect pictures of possibilities so you have ‘a vision’ of where, at this moment, you might be heading with your garden.

1. Think of the kind of things that will satisfy you, as you and the garden mature together.

This is what I knew about myself:

• I want to be able to see color out of all of my windows.
• I crave something green in the winter time so that means I need visible evergreens.
• I also want winter interest for those long cold months. This could be ornamental grasses with pretty seed heads, or shrubs and trees with interesting bark, like the red twig dogwood with its reddish stems.

Red osier dogwood for color during the winter. Picture from www.provenwinners.com.

• I like mostly perennials which come back every year, but I need garden space to grow annuals like petunias so I have some color all season long.
• I will take a straight line if possible to get to a point like my shed, so I couldn't make my paths too curvy because I will just walk across the curve.
• I don’t want grass in the backyard, it needs too much maintenance. I no longer have children at home or dogs, but if I did, I would definitely put in a turf area.
• I don’t want to spend a lot of money on landscape plants.

2. Is there something you want to screen, like your utility boxes or the view of the neighbor’s orange house? Equally important, is there something you want accent?

• I want to screen my neighbor’s house when I am sitting on my front porch, but I need to use low shrubs, not trees, because there is a long-distance scenic view that I don’t want to lose.



Disclaimer: Not actually from my front yard.

3. What kind of garden and plants do I want?

·     I know a fair bit about plants and gardening. I want a low-water, tidy garden in front, color and chaos in the back. Plant selection will be the least of my concerns and I can put that further down on my list.

4. How does the sun hit my yard and house over the entire summer?

This is something people don’t really observe. They may ‘see’ it only when it annoys them. So watch the sun, and observe things like: 

• Where does it come up in May vs. July (and how many weeks will it shine into my living room and how much shade do I need for my front window)? 
• How does it move across my yard in the hottest part of the summer (and where should I plant a tree to shade my back porch)?

By consciously noticing the sun, you can design your landscaping to be useful as well as pretty.

5. What kind of design plans do I need – my own or a professional one?

Front yard- professional or at least put down on paper, to be accepted by my HOA

Backyard – my creation and ever-changing

6. What needs to be done to improve my soil?

Cha-ching! Lots of $ has to go here for my yard. Soil is the basis for the future of the garden, improve it early so the garden can thrive.

7. How much will all this cost, what will be my priorities, what can I do myself, what is better left to a landscape contractor?

These items are very important, in spite of being at the end of the list. But you have to have the list so you can determine priorities, a budget, maybe a design change with temporary plantings and later, the final design building up around them.

I want a brick front path but have to put it off until I can afford the contractor, because it is in the visible front yard. I don’t have the skills to make it look professional and I want it to look great! I will use bark chips in the meantime.

I figured by the time I had unpacked and gotten use to the place and the sun, and I could get my soil ready to plant (though I really just wanted to start planting), I would likely be in my new home for months. By then, I would have a better idea of what to plant and where to plant it.

Inexpensive spring bulbs

A quick post to suggest an inexpensive way to put bulbs and spring bloomers in to your garden: 

Grocery stores and big box stores have incredible mark down deals after a holiday like Valentine’s Day and Easter. Flower bulbs like tulips and daffodils that have finished blooming will go on sale, and can go home with you to give you flowers the next spring. Buy these pots of spent flowers and leaves, put them in a bright spot in your house and keep them watered like a house plant until the leaves start to fade to brown. This is usually in a couple of weeks. Stick the pots out in the garage until the leaves are completely brown and the bulbs have gone dormant. Don’t water during this final step into dormancy or the bulbs will rot.

Then when spring weather warms up and you are planting your annuals, you can just dig a hole, and pop these dormant bulbs and their soil into the ground. Make sure you put them 1-2” deeper than the top of the existing potting soil, the bigger the bulbs the deeper the planting.

Next year, they will come up with no effort from you.

You can also buy Easter lilies. They go dormant more slowly and won’t ever bloom at Easter in your garden. They are forced in greenhouses for the Easter market. They usually bloom in mid-summer when they are naturalized in your garden. It is actually quite a thrill to have these gorgeous white lilies appear.

You can also get bargains on other spring bloomers like primroses that have slowed down blooming. When you pick your bargain plants, they are often wilted. Just make sure they haven’t wilted to the point of no recovery – if it is too wilted, pick another from the center of the group of pots. Center plants usually get more water and less sun, which means they don’t dry out like those on the edge.

Keep them inside and gradually put them into outside shade, then into more sun until they are accustomed to real life conditions. 

Does this sound like too much work? When the weather warms a bit, simply put them under a chair or table on your porch where they will get some sun and some protection from the late frosts. Be sure to keep them watered though, because they will continue to grow and not go dormant like the bulbs.

When they are hardened off in a week or so, plant them in a place that is visible from a window so you can see them bloom for you early the next spring!

The Move: Starting a garden from scratch with bad soil and limited space

I recently moved across town into a smaller, newer house with gravel “landscaping” from a 17 year old garden and large trees, many that I grew from seedlings.

Here is what I left at my old house:

This is what I moved into, in a ten-year-old subdivision:

I live in what is called the high desert west. That's the area that is west of the Colorado Rockies and stretches out across much of Utah, Nevada, and parts of Idaho and New Mexico. This is the sagebrush country that you see in commercials with cowboys.

This area adds some complications to my gardening situation – intense sun and limited moisture, soils that are salty and full of clay. It is an area where we get 6 to 10 inches of moisture - in a good year. So plants have to survive in exceedingly intense sun, with very little natural moisture, and low humidity, which all cause big daily temperature fluctuations between high noon and night time.

I knew I had to have a bit of a plan, maybe not every detail, but a general sequence, because I knew if I rushed through getting a yard set up, I would be fighting the results for the rest of my days.

Into that plan comes my landscaping budget, which of course, I wanted to be as small as possible. Many people put an actual amount on how much to spend. All I knew was that I would be spending most of my money on the early prep of my new yard and I would have to grit my teeth, write the check and have the patience to wait until I could afford the next step.

The first thing would be get rid of the gravel, then add organic matter, like compost, to the soil. Also, I was going to treat myself to a sprinkler system. I have never lived in a house where I didn’t have to drag hoses, an ordeal I'm eager to eliminate from regular garden upkeep.

While these early stages were happening, I could watch how the beating sun changed over the summer so I could better plan how to design my landscape. Now I am no garden designer – I work on the chaos-in-the-garden theory. I do cluster higher water plants together and keep my lower water plants in different areas, but beyond that I use only 2 ‘rules’ – use curving lines and plant in groups of odd numbers. This means planting the same plant in threes or fives. There is supposed to be something soothing about using these odd-numbered groupings and it works for me.

I now live in a Home Owners Association (HOA) neighborhood where the front yard design had to meet certain standards set up by the HOA design committee. That would restrict what I could plant. But I want my backyard to be the same sort of beautiful chaos that I had left behind at the old house. I want all sorts of perennials that flower in all different seasons along the entire length of the garden.

For me, the kitchen view of my new, much smaller, backyard is the most important visual aspect of the back garden. I will plant some small trees and shrubs right along the fence, to soften its straight line. I would like a small veggie garden in front of my shed and the shed area to be screened by an inexpensive trellis, maybe covered with annual vines.

So this is what I'm starting with, and the knowledge that my kind of garden does not spring up overnight. It will be a long, fun process. As my gardening friends and I agree, gardening can be a never-ending project. For us this is a good thing.