Efficient Landscaping

Planning and proper preparation can make all the difference in the success of a project. Admittedly, I can get caught in the trap of over-planning (some may call that procrastination). But I'd like to share an example where I embarked on a project without doing enough preparation and paid a price for it.

About ten years ago, I discovered a love of gardening and began landscaping my backyard. Because it was so shady back there, the lawn was nothing more than a big patch of red clay with an occasional grass sprig or weed.

To cover up some of the bare spots, I created mulch paths surrounded by shrubs and plant beds. After digging up many wheelbarrows of dirt and laying down almost as many loads of pine bark, the paths were done....or so I thought.

What I failed to do back then was lay down a weed barrier or edging. Over the years this oversight has led to many hours of weeding the paths, pulling up grass that encroached into my neatly laid lines (after losing some trees, the grass magically began growing), and trying to control the path mulch from washing into the yard when it rained.

Fast forward ten year later and I'm finally investing some sweat equity and planning into fixing my former mistakes. After waiting until the most recent batch of old mulch had broken down. I weeded the paths AGAIN, installed new path edging, laid weed fabric, and filled the paths back up with countless loads of mulch that I had left over from a tree removal. Now I can rest assured that I won't be weeding or re-mulching my paths for the next couple of seasons.

And to simplify my yard maintenance even further, when THIS batch of mulch eventually disintegrates, I'm investing in rubber mulch made from ground up recycled tires. That stuff won't need to be replaced for years. By doing the prep work that I should have done a decade ago, I'll be saving myself hours of back breaking weeding. Now if I can just figure out a way to keep those oak trees from shedding so many leaves in the fall.

What type of prep work do you do to make your gardening projects more efficient long term?

The Gardener's Notebook

Earlier, I posted about planting strategies that you can use to make gardening easier and more fruitful.

One of the organizing tools that I have used since I first began gardening in our yard some fifteen years ago, is a Gardener's Notebook. I started with a gardening hanging file and after quickly outgrowing that, I upgraded to a three-ring binder with a cover that zips closed. When choosing my notebook, I gravitated towards the kid's section of the office supply store because their notebooks are always so much more fun. The one I use is covered in some kind of heavy-duty microfiber with fuzzy flowers on the front. You could also make your own like the ones in the flickr photo above. The photographer, Lana Stewart, uses cool scrapbook paper to dress up her three-ring binders.

Inside my handy Gardener's Notebook are:

• Tabbed pages to divide the sections. My sections include:
• Annualized Schedule - list of when to fertilize and prune different plants. I've also loaded this schedule into my Outlook calendar to help keep me on track with these chores.
  
• Hosta (I LOVE hosta so they get their own tab)
• Misc. Shade Plants
  
• Soil Amending
• Landscaping Plans
• Feng Shui Gardening
  
• Vendors for Plants, Stones, and Supplies

• Plastic 8 1/2 x 11" sleeves to hold gardening catalogs. I only keep a few and throw out the old when the new one arrives. I mostly use these for the inspiration that the pretty photos provide.
  

• Zipper pocket to hold receipts and plant markers. This has been helpful when I have needed to determine what variety of a particular plant I have. Because we have so many leaves in the fall, garden markers get raked up in my garden. So now I just slip them in my notebook for safekeeping.

• Plastic picture sleeves to hold photos of the garden. My favorite feature of my Gardening Notebook! It's so inspiring to see how small plants, shrubs and trees fill out over the years. If you stick with it and are lucky enough to stay in the same place for a few years, gardening really teaches you patience.
  

By keeping all of my research notes and plant lists in one spot, I have saved myself lots of time and energy whenever I have built a new bed in the garden or have needed to replace a plant that has outgrown its space. The notebook also helps me stay on schedule with all of my gardening maintenance chores and enables me to better track which plants work and don't work in my yard. What tools do you gardeners out there use to keep your info organized?

Creating an Organized and Low Maintenance Garden

Once spring is in full swing, those of us who love to garden really get the itch to dig in the dirt. Every April and May, I enjoy the pink and white blooms of my azaleas and the variegated leaves of my hostas as they poke out of the ground.

And, of course, I have to pull a few weeds, the clutter of the gardening world. But it recently occurred to me that my garden is getting easier to maintain each year because of the planning and planting that I did over a decade ago. You see, if you put the right plants in the right places, your garden will practically maintain itself. This concept mimics some of the basic principles of organizing: (a) put items where they should logically live and (b) use the best solutions for the space available.

Here are a few tips for an organized garden that will save you time, money, and energy:

• Use perennials and shrubs liberally. Perennials are plants that come back year after year. They may be more expensive in the short run, but these plants will more than pay for themselves long-term because, unlike annuals which have to be purchased and planted each year, perennials only have to purchased once. And many of them get large enough over time that they can be divided and placed into other parts of your garden. I have hostas that I've divided many times over the years. This saves me money because the original plant investment keeps producing more plants for my garden over time.
  

• Use native plants whenever possible. Native plants are those that grow naturally and happily in the soil and weather conditions that they are planted in. They are adapted to your local conditions and, therefore, require less fertilizers, pest controls, and watering. Plus, they will benefit the environment by offering appropriate food, nectar, and cover for local birds, butterflies, and other little critters. If you get lured into using non-native exotic plants in your garden, expect to spend time helping them to survive. I liken using exotics to sticking me, a very southern woman, in Michigan for the winter. I am simply not used to being in snow for more than a few days at a time and would be absolutely miserable. I can, however, happily thrive in Atlanta's hot, humid summers because my system has adapted to these conditions.

• Put the right plant in the right spot. Most plants purchased from a nursery come with a short description of their preferred sunlight conditions, the recommended distance to plant apart from other plants, and an approximation of their size at maturity. Keep these factors in mind as you design your garden. Don't waste time and money putting a "full sun" plant in dappled shade. It may look okay for one season but it will eventually become leggy and won't flourish. On the opposite end of the spectrum, don't put shade lovers in full sun unless you want to watch them get brown and crunchy as the season progresses. If you put a plant in a spot where it has room to grow in the conditions it likes to live in, you'll end up with a happy plant that requires very little maintenance.

• Relax and let your garden grow. If you've put the right native plants in the right conditions, they will flourish naturally. I prefer not to use chemicals in my garden, and the droughts we've experienced in the southeast have restricted my ability to water. That means that once a plant is established in my yard, it has to hold its own or it doesn't get to stay. This trial and error, survival-of-the-fittest approach has taught me what will and will not work in my garden. I put my time, money, and sweat equity into what I know will easily grow.
  

Like most ongoing projects, a garden must be easy to maintain or the excuses for not doing the upkeep will start creeping in. The suggestions above will help the do-it-yourself folks. But if you don't have the time or interest to develop your own garden, considering hiring a landscape architect to design and even install an organized and deliberate gardening plan. Then you can spend more of your time relaxing and enjoying the fruits of their labor.