This is really a superior way to work up a plan. First, in a mature established
landscape there is a much better sense of how BIG things are going to be.
For example: in the city nobody thinks about how damn big that little pine tree is
going to be in 10, 20, 30 years or how it will eat the house. Two doors down they
got one of those big suckers and I have calculated that when it goes down it wont hit
our house! and yet, across the street somebody has planted a little blue pine
ignoring how ugly the big thing is across the street (loses the lower branches and
looks nekked). sigh.
People with really great looking landscapes usually have an idea of flowering times
as well as the scale of the plants at maturity. So they are good people to go to the
door and talk to them about their landscape. If they did it themselves they are
going to be delighted to talk about it (fantastic landscaping in the front of the
house is a sign of outgoing people!), and, AND, they will often be ready and willing
to give you pieces of perennials when they divide. So they can be a source of free
plants.
The other thing that I do is take a picture of the area, bring it up into Microsoft
publisher and paste hardscape and little cropped pictures of plants on the top to get
a feel for what it will look like done. But it does take knowing the plant, how
high, how wide.
I have a small city garden and made mistakes with things like dwarf spirea that altho
I absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVE them they simply were too big and were dwarfing and
killing my low growing evergreens that provide some color when the ground is bare.
well... my gardens change a lot over time. I have updated quite a bit of my backyard
recently
http://weloveteaching.com/landscape/MOHlandscape.html
Ingrid
On Tue, 14 Apr 2009 07:04:09 -0500, Jangchub wrote:
I've suggested to people they drive around their neighborhood and see
what plants they like and take photos of them. Many times I'll see a
whole landscape I like and get ideas that way. Other times I'll see a
particular use of two plants together and like that idea.
Victoria