Wednesday, August 28, 2019

Creating Your Colorado-friendly Garden: 1b. Evaluating Existing Plants and Drawing Base Map 2




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.

Mother Nature's Montrose Garden: overview 
of backyard.

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.

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
Poor health/senescence
Unless the plant has sentimental value, this strongly argues for removal.   You will likely have to remove it at some time.
Too large for space
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.
Dangerous (weak branches; leaning; trip hazard; etc.)
Good reason for removal. Will need to deal with the hazard in some way.  There will likely be good alternative plants.
Invasive
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’.
May Argue for Removal
Poisonous; prickly; produces allergens
May be reason for removal, depending on how much of a problem the plant is.
Attracts undesirable creatures (insect or other)
May be reason for removal, depending on how much of a problem the creatures are.
Unusual or unpleasant odor
May be reason for removal, depending on how much of a problem the odor is.
Requires too much maintenance
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.
Requires too much water
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.
Requires regular amendments, fertilizer
Depends on your goals. Many gardeners prefer at least parts of their gardens to require little/no yearly amending.
Requires regular use of pesticides
There likely are alternatives that don’t. 
Planted in wrong place
Some plants can be moved; others will need to be removed.
Ugly
In the eyes of the beholder.  May be a strong reason for removal.
Wrong color (foliage or flowers)
Depends on taste and garden design
Doesn’t fit with design/ theme
For example, yellow-flowering plant in a blue/purple themed garden.  







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
Appropriate size for space
Always important.
Cold & heat tolerant
Usually important in CO.
Drought tolerant
May be important, particularly in future.
Provides shade
Often an important factor in our climate.
Evergreen
May be important (for example for hedges, screens.)
Provides protection from wind
May be important in some locations.
Blocks an unsightly view
May be important.
Would take a long time to replace
May be important if plant is large and/or area covered is large.
Does well in a ‘difficult’ place
May be important if challenging soil, water, heat or other conditions are present.
Native to region
May be important. Native plants often are hardier and more pest resistant. They also provide an ‘authentic’ look.




Food and habitat
Provides food for the family
Important for some gardeners.
Provides food for pollinators, butterflies & other beneficial insects
Should be important to most gardeners.  Beneficial insects help all plants remain healthy and produce more food.
Provides habitat for birds
Often important to gardeners.




Appearance
Looks neat and tidy
Important for certain tastes, designs
Good fall/winter color
May be important, depending on location, other plants.
Attractive flowers/fruits
Important to most gardeners.  Attractive is in the eye of the beholder – not all gardeners will agree on attractiveness.
Attractive foliage
Important to many gardeners.
Interesting shape
Important to some gardeners.
Appropriate appearance for style of house
Formal or informal appearance; if house is of distinctive style (Victorian), certain plants may be more appropriate.
Appropriate for the neighborhood
Particularly important for front yards, and other places open to public view.




Sense of Place
Sentimental value
For example, a plant transplanted from a parent’s garden or plants started from seed from a special place.
Historical/cultural value
For example, a tree planted by the original homesteader or gardener.
Important plant in region
For example, a type of apple for which the region is known, or a type of shrub traditionally planted in a town.
Plant native to the region or culture featured in landscape
For example, a plant native to Japan would be important in a Japanese-themed garden.






If you want to download or print these worksheets:


Mother Nature's Montrose Garden: house and
existing backyard

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.

Japanese Spirea is a magnet for beneficial
pollinators, like this native Brown-belted Bumble Bee

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).

Japanese Maple is spectacular in Fall.
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.

Weeping Mulberries: before
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.

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.

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!

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.

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!

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





Friday, August 16, 2019

Creating Your Colorado-friendly Garden: 1a. Drawing a Base Map



Base Map in progress: Mother Nature's Montrose Garden



The first step in planning any garden is to develop a good map. A base map or base plan shows the layout of the property and accurately locates the permanent site elements on a residential lot. In urban areas and developments, lots have typically been surveyed.  You may already have a copy of your deed map or property survey (or can obtain one from your local municipality). 


Property Survey: Mother Nature's Montrose Garden 

If a property survey has been done, it should show all property edges, setbacks and right of ways, building and pavement locations, and other permanent site elements.    If no property survey exists, you may want to have a survey conducted by a reputable surveyor.   This will help you correctly locate permanent structures on your property as well as adjacent property lines, fences, pavement, etc.   Having a recent survey map will save you time and effort constructing your base map. 


Previous owner's hand-drawn map (not to scale)
Mother Nature's Montrose Garden

If you don’t have a survey map, you’ll need to take the measurements yourself.  A quick way to get the layout and measurements is to access Google Earth.  Simply type in the address in your browser to access.  Click on ‘satellite view’ to get an overview of your property.  You can measure distances by right-clicking and choosing ‘measure distances’.  You can also measure distances by hand with a tape measure.   If you use distances from a satellite image, you should verify key distances with a tape measure; satellite images can sometimes be off by several feet.

Satellite view: Mother Nature's Montrose Garden



Constructing Base Map 1:  

To construct a Base Map, start by redrawing the property survey to scale at a larger size.   For properties under an acre in size, a scale of 1"=10' is an appropriate scale.  For smaller urban properties your scale may be even larger.   You want a scale that is large enough to show details, but small enough to be photocopied.  If you have a large garden, you may want to map it in sections. This allows you to create your design in greater detail.  We chose to divide our garden area into quarters, and map each quarter separately.


Key features drawn on NW section map


You may find it easiest to use simple ruled (quadrille) paper to help you draw your base map.  If you want to draw it freehand, we suggest using an architectural ruler or an engineer's scale (these supplies are available at most drafting, art or business supply stores).   We recommend drawing your plan first in pencil; then ink in the lines for the final base map.

We used plain ruled paper with 5 lines per inch. Since Mother Nature’s Montrose Garden is an acre in size, we chose a scale of 2.5 inches equals 30 ft.  Thus, each square on the map represents a 2.5 ft. square on the ground.

Mapping each quadrant separately allowed us to map an area 95 x 120 ft. on an 8 ½ by 11 sheet of paper.  This size is convenient to work with, allows adequate detail for planning and can be easily photo-copied or scanned.  Below is an example of the SE quadrant of Mother Nature’s Montrose Garden.



The base map should show the following information:

·         all property lines.

·         bodies of water (streams, lakes, ponds, low areas with seasonal flooding)

·         buildings, including basic floor plan with doors and windows noted

·         downspouts

·         outside water spigots

·         outside electrical outlets

·         decks and overhangs

·         air conditioner units

·         all walls, fences, utility boxes and poles, fire hydrants, etc.

·         roads, drives, parking areas, walks and paths, patios, swimming pools

·         on and off-site utilities including electric, telephone, gas, water, sewer, septic tanks and field drains.

·         off-site elements including adjoining roads and drives, bodies of water, and structures that may influence your design.

·         compass directions showing north, east, south and west (or just north).

·         the scale size of the base plan.


To start off with a simple example, we’ve drawn a Base Map 1 for the Colorado-friendly Garden at a small urban/suburban house at 112 Willow Street (below).  As you can see, the lot is a simple rectangle, with the house placed in the middle.  We’ve located all the buildings, driveway, walkways, doors and windows.  We’ve also mapped the location of utilities, water spigots and downspouts.  This is a simple but good base map – we’ll use copies of it throughout the design process.





Many people like to design their garden using copies of their hand-drawn Base Map.  We prefer to do most of our work on the computer, using either a photo editing program (like Adobe Photoshop) or PowerPoint.   We first scan our basic Base Map into Photoshop, using a home office scanner.  We then add details such as utilities, spigots, etc.   We also like to fill in areas of hardscape, such as house, walkways, etc., making them easier to visualize. 

If you’ve mapped your garden in sections, the scanned images can be used as is, particularly when larger scale is needed for planning.  The images can also be digitally ‘pasted’ together for a map of the entire garden at Mother Nature's Montrose Garden (see below). 


Base Map 1: Mother Nature's Montrose Garden
Some features still need to be added



The ease with which one can add or change features is another reason we like working digitally. For example, we realized that we don’t know the exact dimensions and placement of the septic tank and leach field (alas, the prior owner left us no plans).  We’ll add these to the Base Map 1 once we’ve seen if the local licensing agency has approved plans.   We also need to verify the location of underground utility lines, since the map the previous owner drew was not to scale. It’s important that exact locations are mapped for all utilities before you start to design and install a garden.  In Colorado, contact iDig811 to get exact locations of utility lines.  Either call 811 or access on-line at: https://colorado811.org/idig811/. Similar Dig Alert programs are available in most part of the U.S.


We strongly suggest you read the helpful article ‘Drawing a Landscape Plan: The Base Map’ before drawing your base map. It’s available at: https://extension.uga.edu/publications/detail.html?number=C1032-3 For an example of mapping a smaller garden see: http://mother-natures-backyard.blogspot.com/2013/07/designing-your-new-california-garden-2.html


Once your Base Map 1 is completed, make 3 or more photocopies of it.   Store the original in a safe place. 

We suggest that you construct two base maps: one that just 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).  We’ll discuss creating Base Map 2 in our next post (August, 2019).

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We welcome your comments (below).  You can also send your questions to: monaturesmontrosegarden@gmail.com