Home Landscaping
(Page 3 of 10)
August/September 1999
By Mort Mather
Finally, test the soil for pH (acidity/alkalinity) and nutrients. The soil nutrients and pH can be changed, but to do so we need to know where we're starting.
RELATED CONTENT
Buying or building a small home is a great way to significantly reduce your energy use, and you don...
There are thousands upon thousands of abandoned farmhouses scattered throughout the U.S., at bargai...
I'm renting an old Finnish homestead near Nolalu, Ontario....
A community canning center is the answer....
Mother Earth News contributing editor Dan Chiras provides you with the tools you need to green your...
Research
The best research is done by traveling around your neighborhood. What houses do you find most attractive and why? What plants are growing there? If you see a tree or shrub that you particularly like, make note of it. Does it look good at other times of the year? There is no better test for whether or not something will thrive in your climate than to see a mature plant growing in your neighborhood.
Unfortunately, we can't define "neighborhood" for you. When you grow plants that are close to the line for your area the difference may be across the road. Something may grow on the east side of your neighbor's house and not survive on the west side of yours. Our forsythia suffers scraggly blossoms close to the ground, yet five miles away — five miles closer to the coast — the same flower blooms beautifully.
When I was doing my research, I also got books on landscaping from the library, but most of what they had to offer was too formal, too well planned or too much work. Still, there were two thoughts that I really liked: 1) you should be able to walk around your house and 2) wherever possible, avoid foundation plantings.
Vision
Once you know what you've got and you have some basics to help guide you, it is time to work on a vision for what your landscaped grounds will look like. You might want to make a copy of your diagram so you have a clean base drawing to go back to if needed. There are computer programs that can be used for an exercise of this type, but I prefer the drawing board. When manipulating the floor plan of a kitchen, there are pieces of known size like the stove and refrigerator. These can be cut out to scale, along with counters and tables and chairs, and moved around on the kitchen floor diagram. That doesn't work so well in landscaping because we can always find a plant to fit into any space, while others will overlap. The vertical picture is much more important.
A landscape architect may be a good investment. Having never used one, I can't say either way, but certainly an expert would never have let me plant the pine so close to the house or the sugar maple under the utility lines or the apple so close to the road or the spruce where they would ultimately shade the garden. Still, I have never aspired to perfection. In the end, the pine was cut down. The spruce that were supposed to be Christmas trees were left to grow and only two were used as originally planned. It doesn't bother me that the road crew prunes my apple tree, on one side anyway, or that the utility people have shaped the maple into something that looks like a very large magnifying glass.
Page:
<< Previous 1 |
2 | 3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
Next >>
