The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California
15 Basic Ways To Landscape Your Homepage
Redesign The Old
IF IT GROWS it can be either moved or removed. Your entire property will often be greatly benefited by planned moving of the original plant materials to better locations. Sometimes the drastic throwing away of old shrubs and trees will u oil; wonders in an overcrowded yard plan.
In the landscaping of new property there are no pet plants to relocate. When you redesign the exterior of your home it's that much easier to consider the yard as so much implanted ground. Prepare your new plot plan as outlined in the preceding section. Try to use those existing plants which fit your new overall design. Hut be completely ruthless when it comes time to give up old favorites. The most beautiful plant in the world is almost a dead loss if it adds nothing to landscaping your home. The maintenance time and materials it uses could be better spent on other features of your landscaping plan. Often a neighbor will be glad to accept the discarded trees or shrubs and will help you root them out. A few nurseries will give small trade-in allowances on healthy plant materials, if you buy the new stock from their store or garden.
The most often seen error of improperly landscaped homes is a grouping of informal natural plantings boxed in by a rigidly trimmed hedge or fence. Nothing is less desirable than mixing these two basic forms of garden design.
The informal program is always based on plants and shrubs freely growing to their natural shapes and sizes. Pruning is used to keep them healthy and in their best normal shape. Never are the plant materials severely trimmed or dipped when primed.
On the other hand, formal gardens are always plantings of balance, with close clipping and control the outstanding feature. Symmetry about a central point is the dominating design characteristic. NO plant in such a formal garden is ever left to grow at will, They are trimmed, pruned and clipped to fit a preconceived pattern. Each of the plants must contribute and support the overall design rather than be a prominent feature by itself.
Look at the outside of your home carefully and is disinterestedly as possible. Decide how you would like it to appear. Then redesign the grounds as though there were not one single plant or tree on the property. After this redesigning is completed you are completely free to consider economizing by reusing some of the old plant materials.
But don't be "penny wise and pound fool ish." A well designed landscape, with a mini mum of plants, will always be superior to any reshuffling of shaggy overgrown trees and decrepit shrubs.
