Used judiciously, shrubs can add
beauty and make your landscape easier to maintain. Used
incorrectly, they become time-consuming maintenance problems.
Nearly every American home
features a foundation planting-a vegetative border that skirts
the house and hides the foundation from view. In many cases, the
homeowner spends much time and effort maintaining the appearance
of the foundation planting; neglecting to do so would compromise
the home's overall attractiveness and value. You can, however,
reduce the amount of maintenance required, imperative for the
accessible landscape.
Spend some time evaluating your
foundation planting. Ask yourself the following questions:
* Does it enhance the appearance
of the home? * Does it obscure architectural details? * Are
windows and entryways shaded or blocked by overhanging branches?
* Are portions of the walls or the foundation kept constantly
damp by shading vegetation? * Do overgrown shrubs make it
difficult to perform maintenance on the house? * Do dense
plantings provide possible hiding places for intruders? * Have
certain plants outgrown their neighbors and produced an
unbalanced or awkward effect? * Has the landscape kept up with
the times, or does it date your home? Fashions in landscape
design, like fashions in clothing, change over the years.
Updating your foundation planting
is a good way to beautify your home and reduce its maintenance
requirements.
Begin planning by photographing
your home and foundation plantings. Study other designs. The
landscape designs around fast-food restaurants are a great
source of ideas. Because anything planted in these high-traffic
areas must look good and stand up to a lot of abuse and neglect,
you can see what low-maintenance plants do well in your region.
Most of these commercial landscapes are done by professional
designers; study how they blend texture, color, form, and height
to achieve a pleasing effect. Ask for the names of landscape
designers who have done an especially nice job; it costs
surprisingly little to have a professional design drawn.
Choose plants wisely. Planting
yews, arborvitae, or larger juniper varieties as foundation
shrubbery is probably the single biggest mistake. These are by
nature big, fast-growing, dense trees, not shrubs-excellent for
formal hedges, allees, or topiary, but unsuitable for foundation
landscaping. Where these shrubs are planted away from the house,
you can reduce maintenance by allowing them gradually to revert
to their natural size and shape. Otherwise, remove them.
Eliminate sheared, geometrically
shaped shrubs. Perfect cubes, spheres, and cones are maintenance
nightmares and have no place in the accessible landscape.
Replace a high-maintenance
foundation planting or island bed with an assortment of
manageable varieties such as low-growing or dwarf junipers,
azaleas, cotoneasters, barberry, and ornamental grasses. Doing
so will cut your maintenance time to nearly zero, add color and
lively form to your home, and update your landscape.
Avoid placing close to the house
plants that are thorny and rambling, such as roses or pyracantha;
tall and spreading, like forsythia or lilac; and invasive or
climbing, like some euonymus. These are not necessarily
high-maintenance species, but they are best reserved for
specimen plantings elsewhere in the garden, where their natural
form can develop unchecked.
Common design mistakes include
foundation plantings that are too big or too small in relation
to the house; monotonous, one-color, one species plantings; too
much diversity; and awkward placement of shrubs. Strive for
plantings that lead the eye toward the main entrance, balance
the structure of the house with its surroundings, and exhibit a
changing palette of color year-round. With a little thought, you
can design a foundation planting that is both attractive and
easy to care for, no matter where you live or under what
conditions you garden. You may choose either a fairly formal
arrangement of shrubs, balanced on both sides of the entryway,
or a looser, less structured look. Move plants around on paper,
grouping and regrouping them until you have a pleasing
arrangement.
Whether formal or informal, two
simple rules apply: Use only three or four varieties of plants,
and put low-growing varieties in front of tall ones.
Select shrubs planted away from
the house for their low-maintenance characteristics, too. Allow
sheared, geometric-shaped plants to return to their natural
state, or remove them. Group shrubs together and mulch well, at
least 2 feet beyond the farthest spread of their branches. Doing
so will conserve moisture and make mowing easier. Use low
growing, shade-loving shrubs as understory plantings beneath
trees; this cuts down on maintenance time and provides cover for
wildlife.
