10 Tips from Other Landscapers

1. Prep your site. Landscapers sometimes neglect to do the prep work necessary to get your project off on the right foot, says Jack Prikos of The Farmers Market Garden Center in Chicago. That means taking measurements and laying out your landscaping plans on paper before going to the store and buying anything. You’ll also want to clear the soil, till it and rake it smooth before digging in.

2. Know your soil. Lorraine Prost, a garden installation and maintenance professional in Pepperell, Mass., often sees homes where soil conditions haven’t been taken into consideration. “Depending on the area of the country you’re living in, sometimes the soil is very sandy, sometimes it’s very clay-filled,” Prost says. “And in both of those cases, things have to be done before the plants are put in so that the drainage is good, so that there is enough natural matter in the soil to give the plants good nutrition.” Use organic compost, peat moss, or cow manure on sandy soil, and use sand in clay soils to improve drainage.

3. Plant for your conditions. Don’t put sun-loving plants in shady areas or delicate tropical flowers in your temperate garden and expect them to survive the winter. “What I learned is if you plant an expensive specimen tree under the wrong conditions, you’re going to have a bad taste in your mouth about gardening because the tree isn’t going to perform well,” Prikos says.

4. Plan on mature plant sizes. Both Prost and Prikos agree: Customers love to put plants into the ground without any thought to how big they are going to get. “They’ll take a tree that is really sweet-looking right now, and they’ll put it right in front of the window because they like to see it from the inside, forgetting that the tree is eventually going to be 25 feet tall,” Prost says. Investigate how big your plant will get before you buy and space your plantings accordingly.

5. Plant properly. Plants should be even with the ground. “If you get the plant too low in the ground, many times that will allow water to collect there and it will rot the root system,” Prost says. If you plant too high, and you’re in an arid area of the country, then roots can become exposed too much to the hot weather in the summer. If you’re in a colder climate, those roots can be exposed to freezing temperatures. All of these scenarios can lead to dead plants.

6. Location, location, location. Don’t plant too close to the house or the sidewalk, unless you want foundation problems or roots coming through the cement. “A lot of people plant shrubs or trees only a foot and a half from the foundation,” Prost says. “You should be planting them at least three-and-a-half feet away.”

7. Mulch rocks. Mulch goes a long way, “especially for somebody who is trying to sell their house or flip a house with the market the way it is today,” Prikos says. Sometimes, by just adding mulch to the flower bed and around trees, it can help the garden by keeping moisture in.

8. Buck up for the big one. “Every garden needs that one focal point or specimen plant,” Prikos explains. “If you go with all small plants—two-gallon buckets or smaller—you’re going to have to wait so long for this garden to mature.”

9. Start small. Prost recommends learning the art of gardening slowly, with a small garden at first instead of a half acre. “Whether it’s insects, diseases, funguses, drought, too much rain—there are so many things that can affect the health of your plants. If you take on too much at one time, you just don’t have a chance to learn before you’re in crisis mode.”

10. Water smartly. Watering for one hour in each location, once a week will help your plants resist drought. If there is a water ban, roots at the top of the soil are going to dry out, and the ones that have been allowed or forced to go deeper into the soil, they may not look beautiful but they may survive better.