Wait 4 Seasons To Plant the Landscape of Your Dreams

Beautiful plantings by Pro Care Horticultural Services

It’s an all-too-frequent mistake new homeowners make. They move in and immediately begin the process of making the home “theirs.”

I’m not talking about slapping some paint on the walls and pulling up or installing carpeting. The changes I’m referring to are major – walls taken down, kitchens dismantled, bathrooms ripped out. If the homeowners move in the spring or summer, their zest often shows up outside, too, in a new deck, hardscaping and landscaping.

But experts in the remodeling and landscaping industries will tell you that it’s best to live in the home with the existing landscape for at least 4 seasons (if you can stand it) to truly understand what you want, what works best and, in the case of plants in the yard, what will thrive.

By spending a year with your yard, you’ll gain an intimate knowledge of its beauty and its flaws, its true potential and your willingness to alter it. After waiting a long 12 months, you may want to jump in with both feet and do something big the following spring.

Lowell Rolsky, of Pro Care Horticultural Services in Carmel, Ind., cautions against trying to do everything at once. “In most cases, we believe landscapes are best when implemented in stages. Prioritizing and compromising to meet the aesthetic and financial need at any given time allows for everything.” He brings up another point. Our lives aren’t static and things can happen to make us change course. By not trying to manage a huge landscape revision all at once, Lowell believes, “This creates opportunities to live with the landscape, and adjust based on current conditions as things change around you or lifestyles change.”

To truly understand the yard surrounding your new home, you need to walk around in it. Each season brings its own surprises and experiences. Log them in a gardening journal that includes notes like:

• Path of the sun
• Amount and type of available light for plants during the growing season
• Direction and force with which rain drains, soggy areas, etc.

You can do specific things during each season, too. For instance:

Summer:

Great landscaping starts with a design plan and priorities list

Summer can be the true test of a landscape. If your summers are hot and dry, you’ll also get an idea of how much water you’ll have to use to keep your landscape looking healthy. If you have large swathes of lawn, or a preponderance of non-native plants to attend to, you may be spending a small fortune on watering. Summer is a great time to investigate the possibilities of native plantings and the water savings they might provide. Summer also gives you the opportunity to identify the cooler parts of your yard. These areas can be planted or used for recreation or gathering spaces.

Fall:

As the days become cooler, you’ll watch your yard begin its colorful transition back to winter. Make note of what does and doesn’t shed its leaves and what those leaves look like. If you like a colorful fall yard and you don’t have one currently, you’ll get a sense of what plants and trees to focus on when you begin the planting process. Aside from raking leaves, you may want to leave plants such as grasses and vines to dry in the cool air, giving your winter garden some visual interest and places for wildlife to play and hide.

Winter:

Winter is when your yard is at rest. The bushiness of spring and the colorful leaves of fall have given way to the hush of the sleeping season. This is the optimum time to observe your landscape as a whole, spotting gaps that could be filled, and making note of areas that may need to be repurposed. The winter landscape is the perfect one on which to imagine the plants you may see in the plant and seed catalogs that invariably arrive in late January and early February.

During winter you can observe the form the bushes and trees have, too, helping you determine if some trimming isn’t necessary before the spring sap rises. (Do make sure you understand what types of bushes you have before trimming them in the spring. Some need trimming in the fall or only after spring blooming.) Winter is also a great time to inspect the hardscaping to see if it needs replacing or complete removal.

Spring:

The first spring in your new yard may bring surprises – both welcome and unwelcome. What could be more fun that seeing what will grow in your new space? The trick may be knowing what’s a weed and what isn’t. If the prior homeowner wasn’t much of a gardener, you may have a lot of clearing to do, just to stay ahead of the weeds. However, if you’re lucky like I was, the homeowner reveled in planting the yard and making sure the plant labels were intact. Fewer surprises, but few weeds, too.

By May, your plants and bushes will be grown out enough that you’ll have somewhat of a handle on how they’ll perform for the remainder of the growing season. Now that you have live things to look at, you can again assess if things make sense or not in their placement. You can also remove things that didn’t over-winter and decide if you want to spend the money now to replace them or wait until your bigger landscape project is underway. (Remember, you’re still really the observer, not the planter.)

The end result of your year of patience? A yard that will begin to truly reflect you, your family and your lifestyle based on a sound understanding of your yard’s eco-system. Planning and budgeting the stages of your landscape plan will also give you time to research ideas, save money for the project and anticipate the next great phase of your landscaping dream.

Tagged as: landscape design, landscaping ideas, planting stages, prioritizing landscape projects, professional landscaping