Landscaping Basics

Landscaping creates the first impression visitors and passers-by get of our homes.  If you walk by a home with an unkept, weed-filled lawn, scraggly, untrimmed hedges and shrubbery, and abandoned flowerbeds, the picture seen says something about the people who live within.

On the other hand, landscaping that features almost every plant known to man crammed together with an incoherent assortment of materials like stone and wood, also create an impression no matter how meticulously kept.

While the most basic consideration for all landscaping is that it must reflect your own personality and needs, there are a few basic principles that should guide your efforts.

Many experts will tell you simplicity rules, with "less" often meaning "more."  The idea is that groupings of a few plantings that complement one another are more interesting than a hodge podge variety of everything that happened to be on sale at the local nursery.

What makes plantings compatible?  Color, size, spacing, and blooming period should all be considered.  A tulip bed with early season, mid season, and late blooming bulbs grouped together indiscriminately will yield an incoherent, disjointed result.  Plants with similar heights and blooming times should be grouped together.  Flowering plants that produce three or four compatible colors are better than a mixture of every conceivable color.

Other landscaping experts correctly point out that too much simplicity can be boring.  The key is variety, but variety that results in a coherent and interesting whole, not a series of disjointed individual units.  

The same considerations of simplicity and variety apply to the selection of landscaping   materials.  If you like the look of stone and brick, select compatible styles and colors for your patio areas, pathways, and retaining walls.  Red toned retaining wall doesn't work well with brown toned pathway or patio stones.  Simplicity and variety can be achieved with red toned walls and red/charcoal mixed pavers.

If you like a wood look, the same caveat applies.  Landscape timbers and recycled railroad ties yield a more natural look and appeal.  Avoid combining these materials with the squared and perfectly symmetrical look of treated lumber.  

If simplicity and variety are two generally accepted basic principles of landscaping design, why do so many landscaping projects end up with a cluttered and confusing appearance?

One possible explanation is simply impulse shopping.  Many homeowners undertake landscaping projects on their own, and a trip to the local nursery or major home improvement center without a pre-determined shopping list can lead to indiscriminate buying of whatever looks appealing or in on sale at the time.  The same applies to landscaping materials.  If you're not sure what kind of stone you're looking for and you can't decide between competing colors or styles, the solution is not to buy both!

What is the solution?  Don't start shopping till you have a landscaping plan.  Take the time and effort required to research available plants and landscaping materials and plan out the areas you're landscaping.  Based on your plan, develop a precise shopping list and stick to it.  

The final landscaping basic principle then is to "plan your work and work your plan." .