Show #48/6209. Planning And Planting A Garden #2

Site Preparation

One of the most important parts of getting a garden right, is site preparation. There's a lot that goes into that. We need to think about the start to finish, right up until the point where we start plugging plants in and there are a lot of things that we need to consider. As we think about this site, Eric wants to know what Jim considered, how did he go about figuring out what the site preparation was going to look like? What was that chore? The first thing Jim had to do, and he thinks this should be done with every garden is decide what is existing, what trees are there, what are the desirable and undesirable trees and plants. Take out all undesirable. As an example if you have a sweetgum, maybe in the corner, the balls can be very messy as they drop. They offer a little bit of fall color, but to him that would not be a desirable tree to leave. So, take out any of the undesirable trees or if you have a privet hedge you know to take that out, it's undesirable. Just get the undesirable out and then what's desirable you leave and add more desirable trees and plants to that. And as you're going through your landscape design, you're selecting plants that are going to have beautiful form, beautiful texture, beautiful color. All of that working together will help make a beautiful area.
Oftentimes we need to also be thinking about what is appropriate for the space. If we have a very, very small space, yet we have something really, really large that is eating up all the space and that's not consistent with what we want that garden to be we need to rethink our priorities. Perhaps a plant needs to be limbed up or thinned out, possibly even removed.