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Designing Your Garden... At this time of year we often begin to dream of what we want our garden to be ...so how do we get from the dreaming stage to enjoying our garden more this summer? The first stage is to gather ideas. Poring over magazines, new and old and looking at other gardens for styles that suit your home and life. For most homeowners, the front yard is landscaped mostly for the visual sensation. Driving or walking up to your home you and your visitors enjoy the beauty of the gardens while the landscaping is framing your house and drawing it into its surroundings. Curbside beds are pretty from the street but if they can be viewed from inside your home as well they will do double duty in providing a lovely garden vista from within your home. So when you are planning the landscaping for your front yard it is sometimes helpful to stand at the street and look at it from a distance instead of the close up view we usually see when we are gardening. A photograph from this angle is very helpful especially when you are making trips to the garden centre as you can share with your sales person the size and shapes of your home and garden beds as well as the exposure to the sun. You can also photocopy and enlarge this photo so that you can try out garden bed shapes and tree sizes right onto the photocopy. Deciding where the flower beds will go is the first step. The width of the beds should be about one third of the height of the house to look well proportioned. It is a very common mistake for gardeners to make the beds too skinny. If it looks huge to you just remember that most shrubs will grow between 4 and 6 feet across and a seven or eight foot deep bed will not be excessive. Bringing in more soil so that the soil can be mounded up brings a very natural looking fullness to your gardens. It is quite easy for gardeners to go through the garden centre choosing one of these, and one of these, forgetting that plants look much nicer and more natural in multiples. When you are choosing shrubs and trees remember to keep them in scale. If your lot is large you can choose larger growing plants but if your lot is smaller choosing smaller growing plants, especially trees, will keep everything in proportion. Space your plants carefully, reading the tags to ensure that each can grow to reach it’s ultimate size without encumbering the plants next to it and that there are no power lines etc. overhead that will be a problem as they grow. If you have a hard time with the spacing draw a circle the size each shrub should grow and place the shrub in the centre of the circle. It will probably seem like you are planting them quite far apart but this will enable your garden to grow without you having to redo it in a few years. You can use annuals, bulbs and perennials, which are easy to move later, to fill in the spaces for the first few years. After you have laid out your shrubs but before you plant them, walk to the edge of the street and go over the layout. Will the shrubs or trees in front of our windows block your view? Are the evergreens spaced nicely so that when the deciduous plants have no leaves in the winter your beds look even? Are the blooming times spaced well so that in Spring blooms are scattered throughout the yard and again in the Summer, and Fall? Once you have decided that all these criteria are met you are ready to plant. A bit of bonemeal, peatmoss and manure well mixed in each hole will give your new plants a healthy start. Fertilizing in the first year can be done with liquid transplanter fertilizer containing a root stimulator. If you have a hose end attaching sprayer it is really easy to boost your new gardens with this awesome fertilizer. Water carefully the whole first season and your garden is ready to reward you with years and years of pleasure! So dream, plan it and enjoy it!
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