Early spring is a good time to evaluate what landscape maintenance chores you dislike doing and plan now to eliminate or cut back on those tasks. By choosing the right plants for the right spot homeowners can eliminate a lot of pruning, feeding, weeding and pleading to keep their plants looking great .
The first step to a more carefree landscape is to make a list of the problem areas and then figure out how to eliminate the task you no longer want to do.
If you don’t want to prune back rhodies, hydrangeas or laurels from your windows or walkways:
Replace these big leaf monsters with naturally dwarf plants that won’t outgrow their space. Dwarf conifers, compact Hino Crimson azaleas or dwarf forms of Nandina Heavenly Bamboo such as ‘Bar Harbor’ are all better behaved and easy to maintain in compact spaces.
So what do you do with the healthy large shrubs that you need to get rid of? You can transplant them this month to a bed along your property line to make living privacy screen or offer them up for free on a neighborhood site. One home owner took photos of his overgrown rhododendrons, took them to a new neighborhood lacking in landscape and in a few days new homeowners had arrived to dig up his shrubs to use in their empty backyard. Shallow rooted rhododendrons and azaleas and tough shrubs like hydrangeas are easy to move and successfully transplant especially if you do the dirty deed and dig them up in early spring.
If you don’t want to weed around your trees and shrubs – or keep spreading a mulch.
Use a living mulch around your shrubs and trees that will block out weeds, shade roots and even hide the damage from moles and voles. Local nurseries have tables of groudcover plants that do well in sun, shade, poor soil, damp soil or dry soil. There are also slow growing groundcovers for small spaces. You just need to match the growing conditions of the area with the ground hugging plants that would do best in that situation. For large, shaded areas especially on a hillside Vinca minor works great. In a small garden this same enthusiastic creeper would be a poor choice. Instead try the slower growing ajuga ‘Chocolate Chip’ or the white or golden foliage of a compact lamium variety.
Tip: If you are not sure what groundcover would work best, do a trial program. Buy just one plant of several types of groundcover and plant them all in the same area. In a year see who looks the happiest. Then invest in more plants to fill out the area – or plant a mix of groundcovers for a crazy quilt display of weed-blocking, low growing, drought resistant carpeting around your shrubs.
If you do not want to mow, blow, or feed your lawn.
There are plenty of lawn substitutes that look tidy and acceptable even in formal front yards. All lawn substitute plants require some research and soil preparation to be successful. Sunny sites can support low growing creeping thymes and flat stones, shaded lawns full of moss can be turned into a moss lawn or a sea of groundcovers. Another idea that eliminates the lawn is a good design that incorporates gravel pathways, raised beds full of shrubs or a front yard courtyard screened from the street with shrubbery or a fence. Call in a professional if you need help with a planting plan that eliminates the lawn.
If you do not want to spray pesticides on roses, fruit trees or shrubs.
The easy answer here is to get rid of any plant that is constantly attacked by pests or disease.
There are no plant police, plants are not your family members and life is too short to live with ugly plants. Spring is the season when local nurseries offer plenty of potential adoptees that would love to go home to your landscape.
Coming Up:
• Saturday, March 10 at 10 a.m.: “Best Plants for the Lazy Gardener” at Tukwila Community Center. This event is free. For more information, visit http://cascadewater.org/water-efficiency/cascade- gardener/.
• Wednesday, March 14 at noon: “Beautiful Plant Marriages” at Windmill Gardens in Sumner. This event is $5. To register, visit www.windmillgarden.com or call 253-863- 5843.
