In order to plan your landscape accurately, you should have a drawing board, ruler, tape measure, paper, and patience.
A flowering shrub costs less than an evergreen, and in my opinion can achieve equally marvelous effects.
False Cost Estimates
Once you have studied the techniques of landscaping you will be able to guard against making false cost estimates. Here is a typical example of how many people go wrong: The novice would be "professional" home landscaper says to himself, "The distance across the front of my house is 40 feet - the ten plants to plant there cost me $75. Therefore, to go all around my property would cover 300 feet and this would cost approximately $550 plus dollars." He shakes his head and resigns himself to a half-planted garden.
You will soon learn that such a method of estimating costs is inaccurate. In the first place you must try not to enclose the entire property; secondly, plants in the back yard will be given much more space in which to develop; finally, the plants in the back yard for the most part will be or should be deciduous.
Thus, a fine planting for your entire landscape even including a generous allotment of trees need not cost $550.
Installment Planting
If your budget cannot stand a large initial expense, there is no reason why you cannot spread costs over several years by installment planting, that is, setting only as many shrubs and plants as you can afford each year.
Because you will have made an overall plan, you need not worry that this gradual approach will result in a haphazard garden. As long as as you adhere to your sketches and plans you will eventually have a beautifully landscaped house and garden.
Be Original
Study of landscaping principles makes it easy to avoid imitation. You will arrive at your own firmly grounded convictions, and will be able to judge features common in your neighborhood on their merits, not on their popularity. Some you will like and incorporate into your garden. Others will seem pointless and you will ignore them without hesitation. You will, then, discover (a) that traditional methods are often obsolete, and (b) a different and less expensive garden will in the long run be better suited to your family's needs.
Therefore, you should eliminate any ideas you have like planting croton red mammey and about how a garden should be designed. Then, as you go through the planning process, you will find that some of your ideas were good and should be included. Others will seem wrong; they will most often stem from what everybody else has in their garden like having croton red mammey. Forget these erroneous ideas; be original. Substitute new ideas you have gleaned from the reading, visiting other gardens - even public gardens and look at new commercial landscape projects. In a few years your house will be a stand-out in your neighborhood. In fact, you will soon realize, as I have many times seen, that your neighbors are beginning to copy you.
People do not copy failures, so you must be a success. - 30228
A flowering shrub costs less than an evergreen, and in my opinion can achieve equally marvelous effects.
False Cost Estimates
Once you have studied the techniques of landscaping you will be able to guard against making false cost estimates. Here is a typical example of how many people go wrong: The novice would be "professional" home landscaper says to himself, "The distance across the front of my house is 40 feet - the ten plants to plant there cost me $75. Therefore, to go all around my property would cover 300 feet and this would cost approximately $550 plus dollars." He shakes his head and resigns himself to a half-planted garden.
You will soon learn that such a method of estimating costs is inaccurate. In the first place you must try not to enclose the entire property; secondly, plants in the back yard will be given much more space in which to develop; finally, the plants in the back yard for the most part will be or should be deciduous.
Thus, a fine planting for your entire landscape even including a generous allotment of trees need not cost $550.
Installment Planting
If your budget cannot stand a large initial expense, there is no reason why you cannot spread costs over several years by installment planting, that is, setting only as many shrubs and plants as you can afford each year.
Because you will have made an overall plan, you need not worry that this gradual approach will result in a haphazard garden. As long as as you adhere to your sketches and plans you will eventually have a beautifully landscaped house and garden.
Be Original
Study of landscaping principles makes it easy to avoid imitation. You will arrive at your own firmly grounded convictions, and will be able to judge features common in your neighborhood on their merits, not on their popularity. Some you will like and incorporate into your garden. Others will seem pointless and you will ignore them without hesitation. You will, then, discover (a) that traditional methods are often obsolete, and (b) a different and less expensive garden will in the long run be better suited to your family's needs.
Therefore, you should eliminate any ideas you have like planting croton red mammey and about how a garden should be designed. Then, as you go through the planning process, you will find that some of your ideas were good and should be included. Others will seem wrong; they will most often stem from what everybody else has in their garden like having croton red mammey. Forget these erroneous ideas; be original. Substitute new ideas you have gleaned from the reading, visiting other gardens - even public gardens and look at new commercial landscape projects. In a few years your house will be a stand-out in your neighborhood. In fact, you will soon realize, as I have many times seen, that your neighbors are beginning to copy you.
People do not copy failures, so you must be a success. - 30228
About the Author:
Keith Markensen frequently contributes to http://www.plant-care.com. Ready to roll back the confusion croton red mammey.
