Exploring Landscape Setups

Landscape Design Rules For Long-Lasting Gardens

20 June 2023 by Tanya Green

When you have a landscape designer plan a garden for you, you want something that will be around for a long time. That designer needs to know your goals for this garden, and you need to know what your role will be in keeping the plants healthy. Following these rules as you choose plants gives you a solid foundation for creating a lovely garden.

Design for a Future Climate  

Look for drought-resistant plants that can withstand hotter or cooler temperatures, whichever seems to be the temperatures forecast for your area. If you're in a region that's getting hotter summers, you need plants that can stand the heat. If your region is getting both hotter summers and colder winters, you need plants that are hardy in both situations. Otherwise, you end up with plants that may not do so well once those temperatures hit.

Plant Edibles Only if You Can Care for Them Properly

Having an edible garden itself is usually very simple. But there are two care issues that you have to be willing to address and follow for the entire time you have the garden if you want those edible plants to remain truly edible. One is that you have to be prepared to monitor the plants and thin blossoms when necessary. If you plant fruit trees, sometimes they can have massive blooming seasons that look so beautiful that you want to bask in those blossoms. But those masses of flowers also mean that they're all competing with each other for nutrients, and the resulting fruit can be rather bad. Thin the blossoms to free up nutrition to make robust, delicious fruit.

The other issue is that you must be careful with pesticide and fertilizer use. Ensure that you use fertilizers and pesticides that are safe for humans so that you don't end up with great-looking fruit and herbs that you can't eat.

Look for the Easiest-Care Varieties Possible

If you're adding a whole new garden to your property, don't make things harder than they have to be. Ask your landscape design specialist to find plant varieties that are as low-maintenance as possible. You're going to have times when one plant requires more attention than another, and you want to be able to devote time and energy to that plant without having to neglect the other plants. Native plants are usually great choices as these plants are literally built to survive easily in the local area without much intervention.

You and your landscape designer need to have a detailed conversation about what you want to get out of the garden and how that can be accomplished. If you want that garden to be easy to maintain and last a very long time, choose those plants carefully. 

Share