Personalize Your Landscape & Common Landscape Concerns

I am always impressed when I visit a landscape client's home and find that they have added some new additions here and there to personalize and make the landscape their own. It may be a colorful ceramic pot filled with annuals or a neat little metal sculpture. The important thing is that they have personalized their landscape to give it their own unique style. Pick a great local nursery center (not Home Depot) and visit to get some ideas. They will have displays of perennial combinations and unique items that will give you inspiration for creating like-minded areas in your landscape! Establish a relationship with them and they will provide you with creative ideas for every season. 

Some of my favorite perennials are the ones with the longest blooms. You can replicate the flowering seasons of annuals, but with more water efficiency, by choosing long blooming perennials - and the best part, they come back each year! Annuals look great in pots around your patio or front porch but you may need to water them by hand or have a separate irrigation zone to handle the more frequent watering.

Purple Salvia, gold Stella De' Oro Daylily and pink 'First Love' Dianthus are excellent perennials that produce a beautiful flower garden. Plant in drifts of color, add a few ornamental grasses for texture differences and throw in some decorative rocks or sculpture to finalize the dynamics.

COMMON LANDSCAPE CONCERNS

I had a great time talking to our landscape clients this spring about their landscape concerns and I thought I would include some here.

Weeds in rock:

Sometimes, unfortunately, life finds a way. Finding a swath of weeds through your decorative rock is usually the result of the wind blowing dust into your landscape and combining with the natural rock dust to create a germination ground. The best advice is to stay on top of them. You can usually pull the weeds from the rock easily since they will not have a deep root system by being on top of the fabric. You can use a weed killer like RoundUp® (on a windless day away from your landscape shrubs) and then follow up with a pre-emergent weed seed killer like Fertilome's Weed Free Zone to minimize future infestations. Keep after it and you should have much less of a problem this summer when it is hotter and there are less rains.

Mulch blowing in unprotected, high wind areas:

This has been a very windy and dry season up to recently. Combine the two and you can have your mulch blowing into your rock, grass and your neighbor's yard when the gusts pick up. This is especially common in homes close to the foothills. Some "shred" mulches are more wind resistant than others (also called gorilla or hairy mulches) and are usually some form of natural cedar. Unfortunately these natural mulches can fade from the sun much quicker than some of the treated hardwood mulches. The bottom line: use mulch sparingly to break up rock areas; plant plenty of shrubs, perennials and ornamental grasses to help hold it down; use cobblestone at the crests of berms; replace mulch with rock in "wind tunnels"; use MulchGard® to create a non-toxic waxy covering that holds the mulch down.

Bindweed in grass:

This is a nasty weed that entwines itself in landscape shrubs, infests the areas in gaps between landscape areas and yes, even crops up in grass areas. Use RoundUp® for areas away from landscape shrubs, pull by hand when it entwines a shrub (stay on top of it) and use America's brand: "Weed N' Grass Stopper" for grass areas.

Ornamental grasses coming out slowly:

Because of the dry winter, many grasses have not made it or are coming slowly out of dormancy sometimes only showing several blades of green. If they have green, the roots are still alive and may need a little push to pop out. Give the grass some extra attention, cut all of the dead growth out and treat with a light application of MiracleGro® to give it a boost. You can do the same for all of your landscape shrubs that are coming out slowly or from the roots.

When to take out tree stakes:

The rule of thumb for tree stakes is one year for typical areas and 2 years for high wind locations.

Remember, remove all of the tree wrap that you may still have on your trees (to prevent winter snow scald damage on the south side of the tree), calibrate your drip line zone for all of your plant material and give your grass a boost with a 20-10-5 starter fertilizer to give it the nutrients it needs this season.

Enjoy your outdoors this season and be healthier. Studies have shown that when you are in a beautiful and relaxing environment, your blood pressure decreases, your mood lightens and the stress will lift from your body!