As a home gardener you may know a lot about flowers, but incorporating trees and shrubs into your landscaping may make you a little nervous. For one thing, they form the backbone of your landscape and once established, can last for decades. For another, there are so many varieties that it takes some knowledge to select and place the ones that are going to thrive and grow to frame your home and continue to enhance its beauty and value.
Here are some guidelines to follow when planning those permanent elements of your landscape:
Start With a Diagram
Just as you would draw a diagram of a room to see where you can place furniture, plot out a map of your outdoor area. You don't have to be a great artist, but you do have to be fairly accurate within a foot or so of everything you're going to measure.
-Grab a big tape measure and a pad of paper and head on out. First measure the length and width of your front or back yard. Then measure the exterior of your house and where it sits on the property. Last, measure the dimensions of any permanent features like flower beds, paths, hedges, patios, fountains, ponds, pools, and so on. Draw a rough map along the way to help you visualize where everything is.
-Use graph paper to make the next step easy on yourself as you transfer your figures to a diagram. Any stationery store will have pads of paper laid out with grid lines in 1/2-inch to 1-foot scale, and you can tape together as many pages as you need. If it's been a while since you've used graph paper, just remember that in this scale, every foot you measure on the ground will translate to one half inch on the paper. (You can also find rolls of 1-inch to 1-foot scale graph paper online, but the finished product will be twice as large in both directions and will probably be pretty unwieldy.)
-Once you've got the main elements on the graph paper, go back and mark off smaller elements you didn't measure the first time, like existing trees and shrubs and anything else you'd like to leave where it is. Don't forget to include notations of where the house doors and windows are, so your new landscaping doesn't obstruct them.-
-On a corner of the page, draw a compass star and mark which direction is North.-
Study the Sun and Shade
The direction and angle of the sun changes throughout the year, but in general there will be parts of your landscape that get full sun and other parts that are largely in shade. Watch periodically through a day to see what the patterns are, because as much as you might like a certain kind of plant, if it's not suited to its placement it's not going to thrive.
Decide What You Want
When it comes to landscaping, trees and shrubs have a variety of uses. They can frame and soften the look of your home's foundation and fencing, enhance and highlight entries, add privacy, serve as backdrops, define garden beds and other features, add variety in height, shape, and texture, and provide color throughout the seasons. They can even shield your home from cold, heat, and wind and lower your heating or air conditioning costs.
One more thing to consider when deciding about trees in particular, is how much you're willing to contend with in terms of dropping leaves and flowers. Some varieties, such as crape myrtles and jacarandas, for example, put out exuberant displays of gorgeous blooms that ultimately drop on your lawn for weeks thereafter. And of course deciduous trees are wonderful when they're lush, but compared to evergreens, are barren in winter.
Get Expert Help
Once you're armed with all the basic information about what kind of plantings you'd like and how much room you have to plant them, it's time to select the actual specimens. This is where expert help is really useful. A local service experienced in tree and shrub care will know which varieties are best for your needs and particular climate, and will save you from the mistake of planting the wrong thing in the wrong place. A service will also provide the knowledge to care for your new plants with regular fertilization, insect control, and pruning to keep them all in top condition.
