How to Plan Your Garden Landscape Design - Plant Selection

Hello!  I'm so happy to share our updates on our big landscaping project.  We've selected our plantings for the front of the retaining wall and have laid everything out in the space.  I'm also providing some "How-to" information on selecting plants and laying out your garden landscape.

Determine your style

You'll need to take the style of your home and type of garden into consideration when choosing plants.   Formal and traditional gardens have very different plantings than country or cottage gardens.  Do some research  and look through gardening magazines and Pinterest for inspiration photos.  You will probably find a common theme in the photos you like.

If you like traditional gardens, I have a post on how to create one that you may find helpful:  How to Design a Traditional Garden Landscape on a Small Budget

How to decide what to plant in your landscape

Once you've determined your style, you then have to consider the following factors.  A good local nursery can help you answer the questions on soil type and planting zone.

• Amount of sunlight.  If you have heavy shade this will limit your choices greatly.
• Space for planting
• Soil Type - what nutrients may be required
• Budget
• Maintenance Comfort Level
• Your Planting Zone - see image below

USDA PLANTING ZONE MAP

I had to take all these factors under consideration when planning my landscaping project.  We have an antique Victorian home so our garden style is traditional.  The area we are planting is partly shady.  It gets some morning and afternoon sun.  We are in Zone 5 so we need plants that can tolerate a long and cold winter.  My largest planting area is in front of a retaining wall which is under a large Oak tree.  It's a big area to fill with a limited budget.  My goal is to soften this area so you see less of the wall.  We've added some good topsoil to amend the sandy and rocky area around the wall.

The plants we've selected can handle our partly shady area and work well in a traditional style garden.  I also want a low maintenance landscape with some blooms that stays within my budget.

4 medium sized Dwarf Alberta Spruce
3 "Blushing Bride" Hydrangea bushes
1 White Hydrangea Tree (for the area that gets the most sun)
5 medium sized Hosta

Choosing the layout - basic layout

You'll save a lot of money planning the layout and planting everything yourself. 

Basic layout of my plants and shrubs:  tallest in the back - so my Spruces are against the wall.  The Hydrangea bushes are in the center front of the spruces and the Hosta are spaced evening along the front.   My white hydrangea tree (not seen in these photos) is in front of the hard edge of the wall to soften that area and make it less noticeable.




Don't forget to mulch and water, water, water until your plants get established.

Please stop back next week for more updates on this project.

Have a wonderful day!

Crazy stuff going on at my house... Landscape design

Here's a peek at all the crazy stuff going on at my house... 

We are on a quarter acre city lot and the majority of our yard sloped heavily.   The good news is that section of the little yard is private on three sides and if we cut out some branches on our trees we get a lake view!  I'd been frustrated about not being able to use this side of the yard.  The upper part had very overgrown bushes and you couldn't even put a chair out there because of the steep slope of the yard.  Mowing wasn't much fun either.

My home was built in 1885 and it surprises me that so many large families lived in the house but no one ever dealt with the sloping lawn.  I think most of the kids walked to a park close by or played in the street.  Just seems like such a waste of space not to utilize that yard area.

My neighbor owns a commercial construction business and agreed to do a residential job for us.  To bring it up to level, we would have needed a very tall retaining wall.  We decided to do two levels and have a raised patio and lower lawn area.  It's not a large space but at least it will be functional.  I'm looking forward to enjoying morning coffee in our new patio space.

It's a work in progress...



This is how the house looked when we moved in 8 years ago. 
So dark... It was like it was in a cave.

 

Above is the most recent photo before the project started.  Believe it or not we pruned and cut back all the overgrown trees so you could see the house.  The Oak took over again.  You'll see in the new photos we've pruned it again. :-)  I love Oak Trees so I would never cut it down.

 

Unfortunately, you can't get a good idea of the steep slope in these photos.  The pallets in the front are for our walkway project (which will be in another post).

This is taking A LOT of fill!  The lower wall is about four to five feet above the ground.  It just looked like such a mess.  I was really worried about how it would turn out.  Once the upper part was built and leveled, I could start to see how it would come together.



There's my poor neighbor working hard on a humid, 90 degree day.  You can get an idea of the slope we were dealing with from this photo.  I'm not in love with the grey block but once it is all landscaped with shrubs it should soften up a lot.  Unfortunately, the choice was about budget.



We had to remove huge Rhododendrons from this area. Now we've exposed the ugly red foundation that needs some re-pointing. We'll be painting that ugly foundation a color that goes with the house and fixing those windows.



Now the fun part begins...  dressing this thing up and putting on the lipstick.  This upper part will have a clean row of boxwood with some cement urns on each side of the stairs.  It will be filled with this pretty rice stone.  It actually has a sparkle to it that you can't see in this photo.  The lower level will be sod with a white picket fence. 

 I bought a set of these gorgeous urns at Brimfield Antique Fair.  Can't wait to use them on the new patio! 

I'm still worried about how it is all going to look.  Keeping fingers crossed that we can pull it all together.  At least we will have a space that we can use and that will help with resale in the future.  Watch for my updates on this project.  If you have any advice on plantings, landscape or garden ideas, I would love to hear from you.

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I hope you have a wonderful day!