Don’t Rip Out That Bush – Part 2

In part 1, I wrote about how it pays to live in your home and observe your landscape for a full 12 months before beginning any major home improvement projects. This article discusses what you can do in your yard each season while you’re still in the “observing” stage.

Winter:

Winter is the time when your yard is rejuvenating and resting up for the next spring. The busy growing, blooming and letting go seasons have passed. What was new is now gone or frozen in time waiting a thorough spring cleaning.

Winter is the perfect time to embrace your entire landscape in its nearly bare-bones state. This is a great time to identify gaps in plantings and areas that might be better suited to another use. The starkness of your yard is the perfect backdrop in which to envision what could be – and the plants, trees and bushes that you could add.

During winter, you can see if the bushes and trees need trimming before the spring sap rises again. Just be sure you’re not trimming a spring blooming bush or tree. If you do, you won’t have any spring blossoms.

Winter is also the perfect time to inspect your hardscaping (patios, retaining walls, pathways, etc.) to determine might need to be removed or replaced.

Spring:

The first spring you experience with your new yard may bring both welcome and unwelcome surprises. Seeing your yard sprout for the first time can be fun and enlightening. You might wonder why the former homeowner planted THAT there. Or you may delight in seeing spring bulbs poking through a late snow. That first spring is like a present that keeps giving. Of course, if the old homeowner wasn’t much of a gardener, you might have a lot of weeding and cleaning up to do.

By May, you’ll have a good sense of what plants you have and how the bushes will grow. With living things to look at, you can re-assess how sensible the plant and bush placement is. You can also take out plantings that didn’t survive the winter. While you could replace anything that died, it helps to remember you’re still really the observer, not the planter.

Summer:

Summer is the true test of a landscape. Overly hot and dry summers can wreak havoc on plants, bushes and trees not designed to withstand such harsh conditions. You may find yourself spending a great deal of money on watering just to keep things alive.

Since you’re still in your observing period, you might consider studying native plantings that, because they’re native, can withstand the weather variations of the area. In fact, native plants typically thrive because they’re in the habitat that suits them best.

Summer is also the time to find the cooler parts of your yard that can be planted or used as recreation or gathering spaces.

Fall:

Autumn is the time when your yard will begin its colorful march toward winter. You’ll see which things lose their leaves and which don’t. You’ll be able to see how colorful it is and make notes on how to improve upon that if you truly want an explosion of color at the end of the growing season. You may want to leave plants such as grasses and vines to dry in the cool air, giving your winter garden some visual interest and places for wildlife to play and hide.

By spending this time with your yard, you’ll gain an intimate knowledge of its beauty and its flaws, its potential and your willingness to alter it. After waiting so long to do anything major, you may want to jump in with both feet and do something big the following spring. Professionals caution against doing a major renovation all at once. They recommend staging your changes to not only ease the burden (financial and physical) on your budget, but to also give you time to determine if the big picture is still what you want.

In the end, you’ll gain a yard that will reflect you, your family and your lifestyle based on a sound understanding of your yard’s eco-system. By planning and budgeting the stages of your landscape plan, you’ll be giving yourself time to research ideas, save money for each project and anticipate the next phase of your landscaping vision.

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