Landscape Your Place-Increase the Value 20%
(Page 2 of 3)
March/April 1970
By the Mother Earth News editors
2nd Year Finish planting the flowers and any shrubs still desired. Be sure to have some good perennials (peonies, chrysanthemums, iris, hollyhocks). Study up on outdoor furnishings - maybe a terrace near the house or a trellis for climbing roses or grapes. Decide where you'd like to have a garden seat beneath a good shade tree or possibly an arbor with a love seat, swing or hammock.
RELATED CONTENT
3rd Year Develop your present plantings a little more as needed. By now you may be ready to add the trellis you've been planning and some simple garden furniture. A brick walk set in sand can be very attractive and is easy to do. Consider adding a combination fish pond and garden pool using it partly as a fence with a border of blueberries. Any steep slopes or terraces will make a good place for a rock garden.
4th Year By now you have finished all the foundation plantings. You are getting fruit from your dwarf fruit trees and berries from your "hedges" of raspberries, blackberries etc. A few finishing touches will probably be needed in the flower bed. Try to have enough flowers so they will bloom continuously from Spring to late Fall. Plant borders along the front walk from the house to the road.
5th Year The plan should now be about complete, but you will see obvious improvements. For instance, you may want a little more variety now in your flowers and fruits. See if you can't find a few interesting and different varieties in your reference library. Consider ways to blend your animals into the general scheme - especially ducks and geese in the pond, goats in the more wooded section, sheep on the more distant slopes. By now your experience, plus a little study, will tell you what is needed.
Be sure to take a picture of your homestead before you start this plan and another after it is completed. I'll bet there will be such a difference in the two photographs that you will hardly recognize the old place.
1.) Always have your holes dug before you get the plants for transplanting. 2.) Transplant immediately - don't give the plants time to dry out or they will die. Now finally, to save you needless expense on plants and seedlings and flowers, here are a few practical tips:
3.) Plan to get "bare root" plants in early Spring or late Fall. At this time it is not usually necessary for plants to be balled and burlapped (as it is in the Summer) so you will save money.
5.) Most big nurseries have a surplus list of trees and bushes which have grown so large that they must be transplanted. These are often reduced in price "for clearance". They will be perfectly healthy plants if you are dealing with a reliable nursery. 6.) If you learn enough about trees and plants and flowers you can master the trick of getting them from the woods and having a "wild garden" on your own grounds. Many varieties cannot be obtained in any other way. 4.) Don't buy more plants than you can plant in a day.
