Gardening & Landscaping
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
New house with alot of Landscaping - where to start?
Major landscaping going on in my new home++
Its not bad, but there are way to many plants/bushes and flowers for my liking. I like the simple low maintenance look, and I really only like flowers near the entry way, not around the entire front.
We have a fenced yard in the back and there are is also plants etc around the entire fence. The yard is small and I think if we took alot of those plants out and had grass, it would seem bigger.
I have no clue how to begin. I called for a landscaping consultation, and they charge 125 to come out and put together a plan.
We probably wont need to buy any more plants, but take some out and redesign. I am too nervous to start doing it all myself before some pro advice.
Thanks
Re: New house with alot of Landscaping - where to start?
Large expanses of turfgrass do not occur anywhere in nature. They are entirely manmade, and anytime you fight nature you increase maintenance. A landscape that is crowded with a diverse variety of trees, shrubs, and flowering plants is always the lower maintenance choice.
A large lawn facilitates the growth of undesirable weeds and greatly accelerates the reproductive rates of insects. Lawns increase stormwater runoff and erosion that leads to water pollution, air pollution, and climate change; and eliminating shrubs to replace them with lawn raises your energy costs and lowers your property value.
Sustainable landscape design is what I do, so that's my pro advice. Removing shrubs and replacing them with lawn is the worst possible thing you could do, aside from maybe setting your house on fire and burning it to the ground.
Well, a few suggestions...
1.) Prune all the shrubs/trees/bushes down. I know when we moved into our house, our landscaping looked a hot mess, but it was amazing how much cleaner/simpler everything looked with just a couple hours & a pair of pruning shears.
2.) If you want low maintenance, replace some of the higher maintenance flowers/plants with low maintenance plants. I hardly ever have to go out & prune, and I never water anything and it's all fine.
3.) Like PP said, grass can be kind of a PITA. If you want the yard to look bigger, maybe replace the large shrubs with smaller plants. Grass is the most high maintenance of all landscaping IMO, nothing else needs to be cut every week!
4.) I'd call around - a lot of landscaping companies will come out & give you an estimate for free. A lot of companies will also come up with a design that you can buy from them and do yourself.
Otherwise, I'd look around online to figure out what your USDA zone is, and a list of plants/trees that do well in that zone. Figure out if each area is mostly shade, mixed, or mostly sun. And most of all, esp. if you are buying new plants/trees, pay attention to the mature size of it. I'm not sure what the previous owners were thinking when they landscaped, but we have a LOT of plants/bushes that are simply too big for where they were planted.
I am in a similar boat where we have purchased a home that requires a lot of landscaping. My plan for the fall is to prune the shrubs/trees/bushes and cut down one tree in front of the house that may have looked good when it was very small but now it's getting large and out of place.
I'm hoping that will make things look much better and more obvious what additional changes need to be made over time.
I am also in favour of low maintenance landscaping and I've been told that hostas would be a good choice. I likely will dig up the front garden and add hostas in the spring. If I get any other recommendations for low maintenance plants I will let you know.
Good luck with everything!