Choosing And Planting Your Plants
Plant selection is often the key to good
landscaping. A landscape will only look good if its plants are healthy
and growing strong. When choosing plants for the home landscape take
into consideration their preferred site, level of maintenance, mature
size, season of bloom, and susceptibility to pests.
Plan Ahead
Before purchasing any plant, study your
site to determine whether you have mostly shade or sun, how wet or dry
your yard is, and what soil type you have. These factors will help you
decide which plants to choose for your landscape. Some plants prefer
moist shade with acidic rich soil, while others prefer dry, hot, sunny
areas with poor soil. By choosing plants that are well adapted to the
conditions in your yard, your plants will thrive without much special
care.
Time & Energy
It is also important to consider how much
time and energy you want to spend caring for your plants. Roses are
beautiful, but in general they require a lot of maintenance. They must
be pruned, sprayed, watered, and dead-headed regularly to produce good
results. Many people are more than willing to dedicate the time needed
to maintain roses in order to get the gorgeous flowers, but others are
not as enthusiastic about yard work. Look into how much care individual
plants need before buying them.
What to Buy
Many plants are sold in garden centers and
nurseries in 1 or 3 gallon pots. These plants are usually quite small
and it is easy to forget that they will probably get much larger once
planted in the ground. By carefully considering how large a mature
plant will be before planting it, you can save yourself a lot of work,
time, and money. Many people plant too many shrubs in a bed because
they want the bed to look complete right after planting. However, they
will have to come back later and remove whole plants or prune severely
each year when the plants mature. Also, consider that there are often
many different varieties of the same plant and each variety will have a
different mature size. For example, there are hundreds of varieties of
crape myrtles. Some are barely 1 ft. tall when mature, while others
reach 40 ft. or more at maturity. If you have space for a 14 ft. crape
myrtle, do some research to find a variety that will only be 14 ft. at
maturity.
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