Steven A. Frowine - Gardening Basics For Dummies

As part of your narrowing-down process, have fun as you gather inspiration. Here are some great suggestions:

Go online and search for photos of gardens. You can look for home garden designs or search specifically for types of gardens you want to create. You can also check out Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram for more ideas in their garden forums.

Thumb through back issues of gardening magazines and flag beautiful photographs and helpful articles. Grab a few of those arguably fluffy gardening magazines you often see at the checkout stand at the grocery store or home improvement store (technically, they’re called SIPs, or Special Interest Publications). These publications tend to be heavily photo-driven, lighter on the actual how-to information, but that’s the dreamy stuff you want right now.

Check the gardening books you already own, both practical ones and coffee-table books, and do the same. Visit a well-stocked bookstore or the book section at a garden center and do some more prospecting.

Look in your library. Your library can be a super source for garden design books. You can skim through a lot of them without paying a penny. After you find a few useful titles, buy them.

Visit the gardens, including public parks, botanical gardens, and arboreta, that aren’t too far beyond your front door. Take some photos with either your phone or camera. Walk around surrounding neighborhoods and take pictures of gardens or vignettes that pique your interest. Many neighborhoods and Master Gardener programs sponsor local garden tours that are great for idea shopping and you can usually talk directly with the garden makers to pick their brains. If your city parks department takes care of the city parks, walk through them for inspiration as well.

The object of this exercise is to fill your mind with enticing images of what’s possible. You also get to see how other gardeners — in various regions, with different types of yards — have pulled off their woodland garden or cottage garden or whatever you’re aiming for. Study their creativity and their solutions; they can help you clarify your vision.

Having a good garden, or a series of smaller gardens on your property, does cost money. Fencing materials and paving stones aren’t cheap. Garden furnishings and decor aren’t cheap. Big plants, special small plants, and pots aren’t cheap. Potting soil and loam aren’t cheap. Fertilizer and pesticides aren’t cheap. It all adds up. And, frankly, budgeting is hard when you’re dealing with an ongoing project whose look is likely to evolve.

So here’s my main advice: Relax. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Take small bites, if need be. Tackle one project at a time and see it through, and then move on to the next one. Or divide a large project into sections and allow yourself time — even several seasons or years — to complete it.

One place where you can save money is labor — use yourself, involve your partner or your kids, bribe friends with dinner, or hire neighborhood kids. And remember that, fortunately, gardening is one of those experiences in life whose journey can be as satisfying as the destination.

Here are some other money-saving ideas:

Grow plants from seed. See Chapter 10for much more information on this.

Divide perennials and shrubs and move the pieces to other parts of your yard. (See Chapter 7for info on how to divide perennials.)

Get plants from other gardeners — some people may simply give you their unwanted surplus; others will be happy to swap. Join a local garden club, and you may be assured of these transactions!

Make your own compost (see Chapter 4for tips). And always compost your fall leaves instead of bagging them and sending them off to the local landfill.

Buy from the source or grower, whether it’s a special daylily nursery nearby or a local brickyard.

Browse yard sales, junkyards, and antique shops. You may happen across real bargains in garden ornaments as well as pots, gates, trellises, fencing, and so on.

Last but not least, take care of your investments. It’s a sad waste to let good, costly plants or garden areas languish or die. The more you know about soil, about planting, about plant care — and this book is chock-full of useful advice — the easier it’ll be to do right by your garden. A thriving garden can repay you many times over.

Now’s the time to start getting real. Armed with your ideas and goals and wishes, step outside and bring your plans to life. Some gardeners find that the best time to do this step is fall or winter, when you have fewer distractions from overgrown plants and seasonal clutter. The outline and the “bones” of a yard are more evident then. But whenever you do this step, look beyond what’s present. Visualize what will change and what will go in.

When you’re ready to sketch out your garden plan, you can do it yourself or, if it seems daunting or is simply not your cup of tea, you can hire a licensed professional (see the section, “ Getting Professional Help,” later in this chapter). Your overall garden plan doesn’t have to be precise or perfect. It just has to do what you need it to do — show you your yard so you can plan what you want to put into it.

Once the province of professionals, garden planning software is now available to the general public. Computer programs can take you through entire planning processes and generate detailed plans, alternate plans, and close-up plans. Some come with extensive plant databases. Others offer impressive show-and-grow features to help you visualize what your yard will look like next year, five years from now, and so on.

To use one of these programs, you need

Time and patience: You have to study and decipher these programs to understand what they can do, especially if you have no landscaping training. The journey should be as intriguing to you as the destination, or else you’ll get frustrated.

Money: These programs vary a great deal in their cost. The ones designed for amateurs aren’t that expensive and have many of the features you need. If you want a full-blown design program like the professionals use, you’re talking about a sizable chunk of change, but they’re still cheaper than hiring someone.

Good equipment: An old Mac or PC will choke on today’s gardening software; you need a powerful machine with plenty of available memory and speed. If the computer runs your kids’ video games well (or yours, for that matter), it’ll do a decent job with most design programs.You don’t need a fancy large-format or color printer, though — just burn a disc of your plan, take it down to a good copy shop, and have someone else whip up the visuals.

To find software that suits your skill level and needs, do an Internet search, examine advertisements, order brochures, and of course, talk with anyone you know who’s used one. Some community colleges, Cooperative Extension Services, and adult-education programs offer classes in using this software — they’re worth looking into!

You don’t need to be a drafting whiz or have a software program to make your garden plans. Good old-fashioned pencil, paper, and a few simple and inexpensive tools work just fine. And there is no learning curve. Using graph paper and the tools necessary to draft out your garden (as Figure 2-4 shows an example plan). Draw your plan of your site to scale, say ¼” for each foot. Plot every feature you find on your site, both natural and those you or your predecessors have put in place. Use a measuring tape to get at least approximate measurements. You may want to indicate areas of sun and shade.