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| Bearded Iris: A 'Legacy' plant in Mother Nature's Montrose Garden |
This is the
third post in our series, Creating Your Colorado-friendly Garden. To start at the beginning of this series, see:
https://mothernaturesmontrosegarden.blogspot.com/2019/08/designing-your-colorado-friendly-garden.html.
For a list of all the posts in this
series see: https://mothernaturesmontrosegarden.blogspot.com/p/creating-your-colorado-friendly-garden.html
In
the last post (August, 2019), we suggested constructing two base maps: one that only includes the physical features (Base
Map 1) and a second that also includes any existing plants you will
retain in your new landscape (Base Map 2). You can use a copy of Base Map 1 to draw Base
Map 2. And you will use copies of Base Map
2 to construct the maps you’ll need for your site assessments, functional
analysis and final landscape plan.
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Mother Nature's Montrose Garden: overview
of backyard.
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Unless
you’re starting with bare earth, your current garden contains existing plants (we
call them legacy plants). Some legacy
plants you may adore; others you absolutely detest. But there are probably a number that fall somewhere
in between. Before you can draw Base
Map 2, you need to decide what to do with the legacy plants: which to
remove immediately; which to include in your final landscape design; and which
to keep for the moment.
Deciding
to remove a plant requires serious deliberation. Most garden plants have some redeeming
qualities. And replacing an established plant with a new one – particularly a
tree or large shrub – can require years to replace the shade and other
qualities of an established legacy plant. We suggest going slow in deciding which plants
to remove.
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| Pink-flowered Quince provides flowers & fruit. |
If
you’ve moved to a new garden, some legacy plants will be new to you. Get to know them and their qualities. For
some, this may require an entire year of observation and interaction. And you’ll likely have certain legacy plants
that that you’re still not sure about (we discuss some examples from our
own garden, below). Sometimes it’s best to live with such ‘questionable’ plants
for now, with the possibility of replacing them with better options in the
future.
Some
reasons strongly suggest removing a plant (below), but often the decision
requires weighing the positive and negative qualities of a plant. While this
takes time, the exercise pays off in several ways. First, it helps you decide what to do with the
plants. Second, evaluating legacy plants helps you refine those plant qualities
important to you and your family. This will save you time later on in the design
process. Trust us!
Since
evaluating plants may be a new to you, we suggest some characteristics you may
want to consider. The lists are not all-inclusive; feel free to add
other characteristics important to you and your family. You can download the list at:
Reasons
for Removing a Legacy Plant: Below are some plant characteristics that
weigh towards removing a legacy plant.
We’ve also included a few notes about each characteristic.
Suggest Removal
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Poor health/senescence
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Unless the plant has sentimental value, this strongly argues for
removal. You will likely have to
remove it at some time.
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Too large for space
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Unless you want to continue pruning the plant to size, this is a good
reason for removal. This includes
plants that are planted too close to structures.
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Dangerous (weak branches; leaning; trip hazard; etc.)
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Good reason for removal. Will need to deal with the hazard in some way.
There will likely be good alternative
plants.
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Invasive
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If the plant is an invasive weed (or on a ‘do not plant’ list) best
to remove. If not, the choice is
yours. One person’s ‘invasive’ is
another person’s ‘naturalizer’ or ‘ground cover’.
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May Argue for Removal
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Poisonous; prickly; produces allergens
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May be reason for removal, depending on how much of a problem the
plant is.
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Attracts undesirable creatures (insect or other)
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May be reason for removal, depending on how much of a problem the creatures
are.
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Unusual or unpleasant odor
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May be reason for removal, depending on how much of a problem the odor
is.
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Requires too much maintenance
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This is an individual thing. Once you’ve lived with a plant a year
or two, you’ll know if this is reason for removal.
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Requires too much water
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Even if your overall goal is to reduce water use, you may decide to
keep a special plant that requires more water. Just remember that you’ll need to balance the
water-loving plant with others that are more water-wise.
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Requires regular amendments, fertilizer
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Depends on your goals. Many gardeners prefer at least parts of their
gardens to require little/no yearly amending.
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Requires regular use of pesticides
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There likely are alternatives that don’t.
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Planted in wrong place
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Some plants can be moved; others will need to be removed.
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Ugly
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In the eyes of the beholder.
May be a strong reason for removal.
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Wrong color (foliage or flowers)
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Depends on taste and garden design
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Doesn’t fit with design/ theme
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For example, yellow-flowering plant in a blue/purple themed garden.
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Reasons
for Keeping a Legacy Plant. The reasons for keeping a plant are
more subjective than the reasons for removal.
They depend largely on your personal taste and goals for the garden. Below are some reasons that gardeners use to
help decide to keep a legacy plant.
General Reasons
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Appropriate size for
space
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Always important.
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Cold & heat
tolerant
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Usually important in CO.
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Drought tolerant
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May be important,
particularly in future.
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Provides shade
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Often an important
factor in our climate.
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Evergreen
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May be important (for
example for hedges, screens.)
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Provides protection
from wind
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May be important in some
locations.
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Blocks an unsightly
view
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May be important.
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Would take a long
time to replace
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May be important if
plant is large and/or area covered is large.
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Does well in a ‘difficult’
place
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May be important if challenging
soil, water, heat or other conditions are present.
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Native to region
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May be important. Native
plants often are hardier and more pest resistant. They also provide an ‘authentic’
look.
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Food and habitat
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Provides food for the
family
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Important for some
gardeners.
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Provides food for
pollinators, butterflies & other beneficial insects
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Should be important to most
gardeners. Beneficial insects help all
plants remain healthy and produce more food.
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Provides habitat for
birds
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Often important to gardeners.
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Appearance
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Looks neat and tidy
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Important for certain tastes,
designs
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Good fall/winter
color
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May be important, depending
on location, other plants.
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Attractive flowers/fruits
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Important to most
gardeners. Attractive is in the eye of
the beholder – not all gardeners will agree on attractiveness.
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Attractive foliage
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Important to many
gardeners.
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Interesting shape
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Important to some
gardeners.
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Appropriate
appearance for style of house
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Formal or informal
appearance; if house is of distinctive style (Victorian), certain plants may
be more appropriate.
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Appropriate for the
neighborhood
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Particularly important
for front yards, and other places open to public view.
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Sense of Place
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Sentimental value
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For example, a plant
transplanted from a parent’s garden or plants started from seed from a
special place.
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Historical/cultural
value
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For example, a tree
planted by the original homesteader or gardener.
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Important plant in
region
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For example, a type of
apple for which the region is known, or a type of shrub traditionally planted
in a town.
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Plant native to the region
or culture featured in landscape
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For example, a plant
native to Japan would be important in a Japanese-themed garden.
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If you want
to download or print these worksheets:
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Mother Nature's Montrose Garden: house and
existing backyard
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Like
your garden, Mother Nature’s Montrose Garden includes legacy plants. The house has
a formal design, vaguely suggesting a French County style. The existing garden
is also fairly formal. The original
garden is about 20 years old, with a theme reflecting the previous gardener’s
interest in Japan. Many of the legacy
plants are native to Japan, or have been pruned to suggest a Japanese
garden. There also are wide expanses of turf grass.
We
chose to live with the legacy plants for a year before evaluating them. This has been extremely useful, since many
were new to us. Watching them grow and
bloom, seeing their use by wild creatures, and dealing with the realities of
maintenance has been very enlightening. We’d suggest this approach if you’ve inherited
a mature garden.
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Japanese Spirea is a magnet for beneficial
pollinators, like this native Brown-belted Bumble Bee
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We
are converting Mother Nature’s Montrose Garden to a place filled with Colorado
native plants. But we plan to keep many legacy
plants, particularly those near the house. Some choices have been easy for
us. We’re keeping all the plants that provide
food: the apple, crabapple, quince, hawthorne and asparagus. We’ll also keep the plants that attract
hummingbirds (non-native honeysuckle) and bee pollinators (Spirea; Annual Sunflowers;
Showy Milkweed).
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| Japanese Maple is spectacular in Fall. |
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| White-flowered Lilac is attractive and provides shade. |
Other
easy choices include the Japanese Maple (above), with its brilliant fall
foliage. The peonies and white- and purple-flowered lilacs are common garden
plants in the Montrose area. They tie
our garden to the region. These old-time favorites also suggest gardens of the
past, and are appropriate for the house architecture. They are good examples of keepers; we’ll
happily maintain and enjoy them.
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| Weeping Mulberries: before |
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| Weeping Mulberries: after |
Another
easy choice (this time to remove) were the Weeping Mulberries. These large shrubs were appropriate for a
Japanese-themed garden. But we simply didn’t
like their looks. We gave them a year,
but there were too many arguments against them: poorly placed; difficult to
prune; poor habitat value; etc. They are
gone (see above), opening up space for plants more to our liking.
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| Roses: pretty but in the wrong place. |
A
good example of plants in the wrong place are a series of rose bushes planted
around the pond waterfall’s berm. These
roses are very thorny – difficult to prune. They require lots of deadheading, several
times a summer. They are pretty –
but for a short time. They make poor cut
flowers and birds don’t eat the fruits (hips). Worst of all, their placement
makes it almost impossible to access the pond filters. Since good access is needed several times a year,
a thicket of thorny roses is an unpleasant obstacle. Pretty as they are, we’ll replace the roses
with something less formidable.
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| Japanese Euonymous attracts many wasps!! |
A
good example of a plant that requires serious evaluation is the Japanese Euonymus
(Euonymus japonicus 'Grandifolius'), which forms a large, established
hedge around the pergola at the back of the house. This is a lovely evergreen
shrub; dense, easily shaped and highly recommended for formal hedges. The only drawback is the flowers.
In
our area, the flowers attract thousands of pollinators, particularly a number
of species of wasp. In a border hedge,
this might not be a problem. In one
surrounding a summer seating area, it’s a challenge. After much deliberation we’ve decided to keep
this plant and carefully prune off the flower buds each year. We like an evergreen hedge, and to replace an
established one doesn’t make sense. But
we’d never recommend this plant near places where people congregate in
summer!
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| Lots of lawn, front and back |
One
goal for our garden is to replace part of the lawn with more water-wise
plants. We’ve decided to keep a swath of
turf lawn around the house in the backyard.
It complements the house, and will serve as a buffer zone between house
and the native plants beyond. In the
future, this could be replaced with a more water-efficient native lawn grass.
We’ve
also decided to keep the lawn in the front yard – at least for the present.
Most of the front yards in our pretty neighborhood have front lawns. We’ll likely reduce the size of the lawn at
some point. But we’ll need to keep the
characteristics of the neighborhood in mind when we design a new front yard.
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| Russian Sage (purple) with Crabapple tree. |
Several
Russian Sage shrubs are legacy plants.
These plants have some great qualities. They are a tough plant in our area, taking the
heat, cold and alkali soils. They are relatively low maintenance. And they look like our favorite Salvias (at
least from a distance). They are not as
good pollinator plants as the true Salvias.
They aren’t aromatic and have no seasoning value. But they do provide a lovely purple mound in
summer/fall. We’ll keep the existing
ones, but not let them spread. And yes,
we will try some true Salvias, with our fingers crossed!
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| White vinyl fence is not to our taste |
While you’re
evaluating your legacy plants, take a good look at your garden sheds, out-buildings,
seating areas, walls/fences, walkways and other hardscape. Are any features in poor repair? Too big/small? Located in the wrong place? Unappealing?
Make notes – you’ll want to
refer to them later in the design process.
In
Mother Nature’s Montrose Garden, the white fence (above) does a good job of
providing privacy and keeping animals and young children out. But the shiny, white vinyl is unappealing to
us, and makes the yard look smaller than we’d like. We plan to plant a large mixed
hedge to cover this useful – but unappealing – hardscape feature.
Once
you’ve done the difficult job of assessing your legacy plants, drawing the map
is easy. Just take a copy of Base Map 1
and draw in the legacy plants you plan to keep.
If you’ve decided to remove any hardscape features, be sure to remove
them from your Base Map 2. Be sure to
accurately measure and place the plants. You may want to use a different color
to denote ‘Legacy’ plants.
Below is the Base Map 2 for 112 Willow
Street, our example of a smaller urban/suburban garden. Note that we’ve mapped several
existing plants we wish to retain from the existing landscape: an apple tree
that provides backyard shade and fruit; and a tall narrow shrub on the east
side of the house.
The map for Mother Nature's Montrose Garden is larger and more complex, but it follows the principles outlined above. Below is the Base Map 2 for Mother Nature's Montrose Garden.
[coming soon]
You
have a map that represents the current state of your garden. You’re now ready to do some additional
exploring of your garden site. Next
month we’ll walk you through conducting a site evaluation. This exercise is both enlightening and
helpful. It will help you decide where to locate
activity areas, hardscape and plants. We
hope you’ll join us for ‘Creating Your Colorado-friendly Garden: 2.
Conducting a Site Inventory and Analysis’.
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We welcome your comments (below). You can also send your questions to: monaturesmontrosegarden@gmail.com
