Landscaping done well makes your home inviting. It draws attention and shows people that you care. What do you do if you think you lack a green thumb? Break the work of landscaping into its components: Design from execution,  front yard from back yard, and  developing  just one spot from overall goals. Write out all your dreams and ideas for your outdoor spaces and begin to prioritize. Beautiful design ideas must be  balanced to fit your use and the overall context of your home naturally. With a little planning and just getting started you will be amazed at what a difference you can make.

What would this look like?

Let’s say you just moved into a home in which the front landscaping is overgrown and looks uncared for. You’d like to create a nice backyard space, but the front is too bad to not make it the priority. Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Look at the overall architecture of the front of your house. What lines are its best assets? Some houses have an unattractive addition that could benefit from a hedge or larger bushes. Most benefit from landscaping that is kept trimmed, not planted directly against the house and in proportion with the house.
• How is the front door or front porch framed. As with a picture, the frame shouldn’t get in the way of the art. Landscaping is its own art, but it shouldn’t compete with your entrance.
• What does the entrance path to your front door look like? Is it something you can accent? Do you need to create one with stones or pavers set into the lawn?

When you have an idea of your planting spots and border areas, it’s time to figure out what to plant. What direction does your front face? Notice what areas get sun and what times of the day. Familiarize yourself with plant choices you like. Look around your own and other neighborhoods. Notice where these are planted. Visit your local nursury. To get started on your design, here is what to consider:

• A well planted and maintained landscape will use contrast and compliment to make a statement. What can you use in your yard and what should be taken out? Then plan your new plantings.
• Note these elements of plants you are considering:  Plant size, both height and width, and overall presence such as bushy or thinly foliaged; leaf size, shape, and color; does it lose leaves in winter or keep them; is it flowering or not; is it invasive and spreading or easy to control; how fast does it grow; does it grow best in shade, partial shade, light sun, or full sun; and does it match the climate in which you live in terms of tolerance of freezing, high heat, highly wet or drought conditions.
• In your design, plan your anchor plants and small plant or flower beds. Placement of larger anchor plants or trees should be decided on their size and look five years down the road or longer. You can use something that will eventually get too big and need to be removed if that time is a decade away, but consider locations that will work longer term. In small plant and flower bed areas you may want small flowering bushes or plants that are perennials, that come back every year. Alternatively the flowers on annuals last as long as five months. Annuals do not come back the following year but give your beds a lot of pop while you have them.
• As you consider the plant characteristics mentioned above you will alternatively want to both contrast elements and align them. Differing heights, leaf shape, leaf color, and flower color can create a beautiful mosaic, with nuances of texture and shade. Making good decisions as to when to group similar things together is just as important. While differing heights are important you usually want similar sizes together rather than a high-low-high-low pattern. Some plants will not even show up unless they are grouped with the same or similar plant. A dark unusually textured plant might get lost in a random pattern of plants, but create a focal point when paired up. Random variation of colors in flowers can look good, but might look even better when put in a group. The colors certainly make a bolder statement when grouped.
• If you are hiring a landscaper or gardener to help you, it might be worth it for you to pay them for some design time. An extra hour or two at their installation rates is a good deal for you and they shouldn’t give that time away for free :>}.

Landscape installation: Whether you use a professional or not, you will want to know some landscaping/gardening basics:

Soil:

• Healthy soil needs to be acheived and maintained. To understand good soil characteristics consider that roots need nutrients, air, water, and room to expand. Soil consists of four basic parts in various ratios: Sand, silt, clay, and humus. The first three are actually rock particles of three size ranges. For trivia buffs,  the Sunset Western Garden Book says, sand ranges from 1/500 to 1/12 inch, silt from 1/12,000 to 1/500th, and clay is smaller than 1/12,000. You needed to know that! Humus is organic material, as in decaying plant matter, and should be distinguished from Hummus, the delicious meal from chick peas. Clay helps provide minerals and helps the plant connect with other nutrients. Too much clay, and your soil doesn’t drain well, depriving your roots of oxygen. Sand helps with drainage, but too much and you lose nutrients and water. Humus provides nutrients but almost more importantly humus is the great universal fixer of most all soil problems. Soils at the extremes of the sand to clay continuum may need the missing component. Most soils will just need humus. You can also send your soil to a lab for testing: http://www.umass.edu/plsoils/soiltest/.

Planting:

• Even after you have rototilled your planting area and tilled in nitrogen-added-sawdust, compost, or other organic material, the best planting methods have you digging a large, deep hole at the individual plant location. Mix even more organic material here. This gets good stuff deeper than your overall soil improvement campaign. “Large and deep” is relative to the current and future size of your plant.
• Check again how much room your plant needs to make sure your design acommodates them. You can crowd a little bit for a fuller look.
• Take plant out of container by pulling or cutting it off. Untangle bound roots. I usually break the root wad into four quadrants balancing how delicate the particular roots are with the desire to set them free. Longer strands of roots can be draped in the hole and your good soil partially filled in before placing the rest of the plant in place and filling in around it. Read particular planting instructions, but generally plant high, press the soil down around outside of plant, add more soil, and then place hands over top of soil near plant and press down firmly. With all soil pressed down, water generously to settle soil.
• Keep the area well watered for several days. It is better to hold off on fertilizer for a few weeks to let plants get established.

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