7 deadly sins of landscapings

Taken from msn:



7 deadly landscaping sins
From unnaturally geometric bushes to skimpy garden beds, our experts save you from your worst landscaping transgressions.By Christopher Solomon

Hey, Joe Homeowner: Drop that rake and fall to your knees like the sinner you are.

We asked a half-dozen certified landscape designers with the Association of Professional Landscape Designers what crimes against nature they regularly witness in neighborhood yards. And while everyone has his own pet peeves, a clear consensus emerged in the responses.

Call them the seven deadly landscaping sins. Don't be surprised if your home is guilty of more than one of the offenses, but fear not. For every transgression, our experts shared at least one way to atone.

Sin No. 1: The meatball shrub"One of the things that drives me crazy is the pruning of shrubs into boxes, balls, squares, triangles and rectangles," says Bobbie Schwartz, owner of Bobbie's Green Thumb in Shaker Heights, Ohio and author of "The Design Puzzle: Putting the Pieces Together" These giant blocks and spheres -- designer Rhonda Smith calls it the "meatball look" -- often occur close to the house. "That's why a lot of houses look like fortresses," says Schwartz, who lectures nationally on landscape design. "You can't see the windows, you can't find the doors. It makes for a very unwelcoming exterior."

How to atone: "I really think the trend is toward very natural, ecological landscapes," Schwartz says, echoing several designers. Sometimes large shrubs are aggressively manicured because they're simply too large for where they've been placed and they need to be removed, says Smith, owner of Exteriors in Merrimac, Mass.

But depending on the plant and its location, you may be able to let a shrub simply grow out and prune it more naturally, Smith says. Inexperienced homeowners usually just cut the newest growth on a bush to tame it. But instead, try taking out perhaps one third (at most) of the older wood in a lilac or other quickly growing plant, which allows the newer wood to be the dominant part of the plant and lets it grow in a more organic form.

If you're not an experienced gardener, and don't want to learn, don't expect a standard "mow and blow" company to do this for you, says Deanna Glory, of Deanna Glory Landscape Design in the San Francisco Bay area. Invest in a true gardening service -- or expect more meatballs. Sin No. 2: Marching flowers"Soldiering" -- the act of running single plants or flowers in a file beside a sidewalk or driveway -- is "out of fashion," says Mary Donovan, owner of Donovan Design in the Atlanta area. Why? It looks odd and unnatural to have a single flower occurring by itself -- and nature doesn't work in strict rows, anyway.

How to atone: "Now we plant in mass groupings, more like nature does," says Donovan. "Bunched together, in a bouquet effect, that attracts the eye." Shrubs, annuals, perennials -- everything can work this way. To accommodate this, beds can often break from the linear mold, too, and be more rounded and shapely.

"The only time you want 'one-sies,'" Donovan says, is with "a specimen plant. And that's usually a tree. You want it to stand out all by itself."

Sin No. 3: Dyed mulch "When I'm driving around, the first thing I react to is those new, strongly colored mulches, because the eye is drawn to those first, not the plants first," Donovan says about the reddish-orange, dyed mulch that has grown popular in the past five to seven years. "It really can stick out in the landscape. It doesn't look natural."

How to atone: Stick to natural mulch, and take your color cues from the natural ground materials of the area in which you live, Donovan says. For example, in the South, she suggests using pine nuggets, or chewed-up pieces of pine bark, or pine straw. "The landscaping is meant to do two things: one is to anchor the man-made structure to the land and the other is complement it," she reminds. "Mulch should be forgotten. It should not come forward to the eye."

Sin No. 4: Too much -- of everything Just as many people clutter the inside of their houses, they clutter the landscaping with too much stuff in too many hues. "In their attempt to beautify they don't know what to choose, and so they impulse buy," says designer Smith. "And they do this potpourri of everything."

The upshot? "They'll get this hodgepodge effect," says Donovan, who sees it often. But using lots of colors all over the place "produces chaos," she says. "That's too busy for the eye. It's like wearing too much jewelry." And often all of the colors don't complement the home -- one of landscaping's chief goals.

How to atone: First, don't be scattershot. "I think one of the top things that people need to remember is to keep it simple," Smith says. "Buy five, seven, 11 of something, and combine it with another plant" and you'll get a lot more visual bang for your buck.

A very effective way to create unity with color is to use a monochromatic scheme -- that is, a scheme in which everything is related to one color, Donovan says. For instance, "You could work in the purple family -- purples and plums and lavenders." Some plants that would work in that scheme: loropetalum, an evergreen shrub with burgundy-colored leaves; camellias; clematis; Japanese maple; and Knockout Rose, a soft blue-red rose that's disease resistant and is very popular in the South right now, Donovan says.

Want a little more color? Donovan recommends a simple complementary color scheme: using two colors that are opposite each other on the color wheel, such as purple and yellow, for instance. "And you can always mix white in," she says.

Sin No. 5: Bad proportions Many homeowners don't have a good sense of what fits in their landscaping. In many cases, "People use things that are too small," says Daniel Lowery, a garden designer, consultant and owner of Queen Anne Gardens in Seattle. "It could be everything from trees, to shrubs, to containers."
Designer Smith recalls not long ago seeing, in front of a home and its large expanse of lawn, a prominent lamppost "with this teeny, tiny lamp at the top of the post."

Often, when people plant trees in their yards they make small islands -- too small -- that at 3 or 4 feet wide look adrift in the yard, with single flowers like polka dots, says Patrick Bones, owner of Brighton Landscape & Design in Tulsa, Okla. "For lack of a better professional word, it just looks twinky," says Bones, who is president-elect of the Association of Professional Landscape Designers.

Proportion cuts both ways. Recently, Bones saw in mid-town Tulsa, home to many old oil barons' mansions, a yard in which a landscaper had had plopped down giant landscaping boulders and a water feature. "It looks terrible. It's too bad, because they spent so much money," Bones says. "Those are the ones where I drive by and I just want to cry." Proportionality extends to keeping a home somewhat in the realm of the neighborhood's aesthetic, Bones believes.

How to atone:• Trees: "Houses are big, and trees should be bigger than houses," pronounces Lowery. "A small tree is 20 feet tall." Plant a tree that will mature into a grand addition, he suggests. "It's better to plant a younger tree. It's easier and less expensive, and there's a higher success rate."
• Pots and containers: "Containers, decorative pots, less than 24 inches tall and in diameter are a waste of money," Lowery says. "One or two big containers are much more dramatic than several 'wiener' pots," he says. Pots smaller than that look too small against the house and aren't good for plants anyway. "If someone's looking for compliments," he adds, "they'll get an 'oooh' out of a big pot; they won't get a compliment out of a little pot."
• Islands: If you've got a mid-yard island, expand its area threefold, and give those single plants some company, Bones suggests.
• Picture it: Wondering whether that lamp or fountain will work in front of your home? Don't guess; bring a picture of your house to the store, the experts advise.

Sin No. 6: Skinny sidewalks "Another one that drives me crazy is the narrow, 'contractor' sidewalk," says Schwartz, referring to the standard-issue residential sidewalk usually installed by a contractor when the home is built. That sidewalk is only wide enough for one person, shoots straight off the driveway and usually leaves room for only a narrow planting bed between sidewalk and house.
"Layering," the important work of placing two to three different groupings of plants of different heights and textures, can't be done in such a cramped space. A frustrated homeowner usually resorts to passé soldiering, Schwartz says.

In addition, says designer Glory, a concrete slab is invariably drab and excruciatingly boring: "It looks unfinished."

How to atone: Schwartz recommends widening, and meandering, the approach to your home. "It should be welcoming, it should be enjoyable, it could even be an adventure, depending on how it's designed and planted," she says.

The material itself needs to be spiced up, too, Glory says. "There's so much fun stuff you can do with concrete these days." Colors can be mixed into it (integral concrete); acid staining can give an old world look; and stamping can give concrete the very realistic look of stone, for example.

Sin No. 7: House-hugging plants and their bad beds "Most homeowners plant way too close to their home," Bones says. "It's like pieces of furniture pushed up against the wall." One reason for this may be that homeowners confine themselves to the shallow beds that surround most suburban homes. To landscape designers, these beds – installed for reasons of haste and expense by contractors -- are like fingernails on a chalkboard. "In a lot of homes the beds look like Band-Aids, instead of skirts" that would flatter the edifice, Schwartz says. And when homeowners jam plants and shrubs into them, they're overcrowded to boot.

How to atone: First, deepen those beds. A general rule of thumb is to extend planting beds adjacent to a house out about one- or two-thirds of the house's height at that location. When you're in the home you should be able to see out into the beds, Smith says.

Next, "You need to pull the shrubs away from the wall,” Bones says. You should be able to walk between your plants and your wall. If you do opt for foundation plants, plant a dwarf variety that will not grow too large and intrude upon the house, Smith suggests.
And if you’ve got existing gigantic plants that are smothering your windows? Consider the hatchet. "We're doing one today," says designer Bones. "Ripping everything out that the builder put in."

Finally, get away from the everyday, suggests Schwartz. "I hate normal foundation plantings," she says of the ho-hum evergreens and hostas that everyone uses.
Add textural contrast to give your home's exterior an updated look, she says. Think trees with interesting leaves such as sweet gum and acanthus, for example. "What you want is the contrast, so that all the leaves don't look the same." Schwartz says. "I would add ornamental grasses, I would add flowering deciduous shrubs, I would add perennials."

One final piece of adviceDraw up a plan before remodeling your home's landscape, so the final result will have a unity and coherence to it, and you can tackle pieces one at a time.
Tackle a plan yourself, or consider hiring a landscape designer. Cost of a plan from a designer ranges, depending on region and on the scale, from about $500 to $750 in the South to $1,000 to $2,500 in the Northeast. .