The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly - Bad landscaping

Once you've grown enough trees and shrubs, and cut down enough overgrown landscaping, you can see the future problems with new landscaping. Take a look at this bed featured as part of a HGTV dream house. First, you must be kidding about the evenly spaced evenly sized globes of green. And it's hard to tell what they are (mugo pine? probably), but even if slow growing (as mugo pines) how long before they coalesce making a solid mass and begin crowding each other out? Second, the monoculture of ornamental grass in a row! Yeah, grass grows in rows, lots of it, especially here in Lincolnland, but your landscaping shouldn't look like a field of maize. Probably not a good idea to burn them rather than cutting them down! Third, those pretty firs almost planted under the eaves. Unfortunately trees grow, and these will be crowding the house in no time at all. Landscapers do this because they want the bed to look nice now for show and sale, but with total disregard for the future and with the understanding that most people can't envision the future. Hey, every now and again, you make a mistake planting something and not allowing enough room; the Phactor is thinking of a certain 5 gallon thread-leafed Chamaecyparis that has really grown a lot in just 10 years, and they are tricky to prune if you don't want a poodle. Placing young plants too close together or to other plants or buildings or driveways and sidewalks is probably the most common landscaping mistake the Phactor sees, and he sees it alot. A lot of nursery tags now tell you how big the tree or shrub will be in 10 years, so make allowances. Too many people seem to think plants shouldn't grow, and they seem annoyed when to explain to them what will happen. Dream house or nightmare? Probably not a real nightmare, but bad, as in uninspired and poorly planned, just the same. HT to the Garden Rant where they also go ballistic about native plant "lawns" that run afoul of mowing ordinances.

Have a ball planting new trees and shrubs

Every now and then, just for a change of pace, the Phactor tries to dispense with some practical gardening advice. Since this is an excellent season to plant new trees and shrubs, here is some important advice for novice gardeners out there. Whenever you buy nursery stock that has been potted, placed into one of those big plastic pots, you must take the time and effort to tease out the root ball, even if it means breaking some of the roots in the process. The longer the plant has been in the pot the worse the problem. My tool of choice is an old, dull three pronged soil scratcher; it works fairly well pulling the roots out of that compressed cylinder so that you may spread the roots out as you plant it. If you don't do this, there is a good chance that in 2 to 3 years, you will wonder why your plant is not growing very well, or why it died, or why it looks so weak and puny, and when you pull on the base of the tree or shrub, up comes the cylindrical root ball the same shape and size as when you put it in the ground. You might as well have planted it pot and all. The Phactor learned this the hard way many years ago after exhuming several failures. So get out there, take advantage of the end of the season sales at nurseries, and tease out those roots before you plant. Balled and burlaped trees generally do not suffer from this problem. Oh, one more bit of advice, find someone to dig the holes while you tease the roots and lecture them on this advice.