Garden Design Advice
Doug says:
Garden design is indeed an overwhelming subject when you're first new at it. You buy the property, you have great dreams and then you run right smack into the wall they call garden reality. What comes first - what do I do - when.
Gardening is indeed the slowest of the performing arts and when you think of it like this you understand several things. The first is that you have to practice to get it right. You just don't plop down a great garden. So take a deep breath and relax. I've been doing this for more years than I want to count (I can count - I just don't want to today) :-) and I still need practice.
You're going to make a lot of mistakes in this process but that's OK because there's not a dancer or singer or artist out there that hasn't messed up a practice or performance with a mistake.
Admitting our human frailties, we can move on.
And the first thing you're going to do is congratulate yourself on creating a vision in your head for your garden. Good! Creating the vision is step one.
The second thing you're going to do is start reading everything you can about soil. I know it's boring but you're going to find that if you get this one thing right - the rest of your garden will take care of itself. Specifically organic soils and compost - the bulk of what you need to know is in the compost section.
But I want to plant something! (I can hear the cry now)
OK - go plant some trees. The first plants you want to put in the garden are the slowest growing and they're often the most expensive. So tuck in your budget and splurge on trees. You can fill the gardens with less-expensive annual flowers.
But you really want to do your hardscaping first. Your decks, patios etc.
And then you can start thinking of putting in flower beds, ponds and the decorations of the garden.
In the meantime, plant scads of annual flowers everywhere while you're building. Try an easy perennial or two but don't go nuts planting and digging flower beds before your decks/patio and trees are in because you'll find the locations will all change.
But do relax. Gardening is a lifelong learning challenge and you simply won't get it right the first time. Or the second. Maybe by the third year, you'll start to figure some stuff out.
Read everything you can. Look at every picture you can. Dream.
Welcome to our wonderful world. :-)
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