What’s Your Garden Style

January 28, 20143 Comments

Do you prefer the packed plants of a cottage garden, or the sleek lines of a modern garden? By knowing your particular garden style, it is easier to envision what your garden can become. For ease, I have categorized garden styles based on three types of gardeners.

Type One: I Hate Yard Work

Do you have no idea what a pair of loppers of for, or have yet to buy a shovel? This category just might fit you. Those who embrace type one do anything but gardening on a Saturday. They might love a variety of flowers, and shrubs, as long as they never have to do anything to them. Their gardens are often never seen or used for months at a time. If you belong to type one, your garden might fit one of the following styles:

Weed-driven

Elements: A minimum of cultivated plants, with preference for native and exotic invasive plants. Siberian Elms, annual grasses, thistles and bindweed are home in this garden. Maintenance involves avoiding dandelion diggers, weed killers and mulch.

Sterilized Ground

Elements: A sterilized ground garden is devoid of any plant life. Preference is given to rocks, concrete, and bare ground. This garden style is very popular with Round-up enthusiasts.

Type Two: I Have no Idea What I’m Doing

These gardeners are more involved in their gardens than type one. They have a variety of gardening tools and plants, none of which would be recommended by a horticulturist. Type two gardeners enjoy spending time in their gardens doing tasks that usually make things worse. If you are a type two gardener, your garden might fit into one of the following styles:

Overabundance of Petunias

Elements: Common plants like petunias proliferate, although generally do not thrive. Cement curbing, large swatches of lawn, and perhaps a few roses also are common elements in this style.

Power Tools

Elements: Hedge plants and over manicured lawns are a must. The more tasks that involve a gas driven tool the better. Hedges are often half dead, and topping trees is common.

Death is Okay

Elements: At least several dead trees, straw-colored grass, combined with sickly roses are hallmarks of this garden. Usually plants are chosen based on any characteristic except if it is well adapted to the location.

Type Three: Boring is Better

Type three gardeners enjoy a very small palette of plants, with no visual interest. Beds are typically undersized and filled with nothing in particular. All garden work is concentrated to one or two types of plants.

Lawn Only

Elements: The only plant allowed is lawn, and perhaps a tree. Often maintained to shiny green, lawn is everywhere, including small side yards and awkward corners. This style is great for those who enjoy mowing lawns for long hours during the summer.

Transition

Elements: These gardens are typically once well-maintained gardens, that are slowly reverting to nothingness. All flowers and shrubs in beds are best left alone and will hopefully die quickly, making way for beds with a small covering of wood chips or rocks and plenty of visible week fabric.

Hopefully now you have narrowed down you garden type and style. I would love to see more pictures of the styles listed above. (Mine were all from my archives and some aren’t as representative of the style as I would like.) Please head over to my Facebook page and share.

Pictures from a Walk

November 7, 20132 Comments

Occasionally it is fun to take pictures of what has gone horribly wrong in landscapes. These pictures are from a walk a couple weeks ago. It is far easier in my community to find pictures of blunders than to find a unique, good looking garden. All of these pictures happened in a two block radius.

So here, are the my top five landscape blunders where I live, with a few extra bonuses thrown in.

1) Pruning
I have no idea why everybody hedges everything. If you are buying pruning equipment, it is far more beneficial to buy a pair of loppers than hedging shears, and actually learn how to prune a shrub. It is far less work. This pictures is an especially bad example.

2) Weed Trees
We have a lot of trees. The maples, london plane trees, fruit trees, are all nice. But there is huge prevelance of siberian elms, tree of heaven, and seedling locust. These trees are weeds. This picture is not especially good, but it is common to fine a back empty space covered in weedy trees. My current home has a Siberian Elm, my last had tree of heaven.

3) Lack of Mulch
Bare soil surrounds flowers, and then up comes the weeds. Or it is just bare soil, like this picture, which is not especially lovely. What happened to using a good organic mulch? Wood chips, leaf mulch, pine needles, compost, anything. It will keep the weeds down, and make the place look much better.

4)Weeds
I think foxtail barley is in heaven here. I am pretty sure it thrives in the irrigation water. It was a battle to fight with it in my garden, but if it is continually allowed to go to seed, it will always be a problem.

5)Landscape Fabric
It will just look awful in a few years. And it doesn’t necessarily keep down the weeds.

Bonuses:

Cement tree ring: No idea why these exsist. In a few years they always look like this. A tree needs far more room than a two foot circle anyway.

Chainsawed trees: This is not how you prune trees.

Nightmares

July 30, 2013Leave a comment

On a ~~dark and stormy night~~ bright and sunny day….even cheery gardens harbor nightmares.

I recently saw this beautiful vine, climbing up the fence at the rear of a small community garden.

At first, I wondered what it was. It was quite striking, with purple flowers and berries of varying shade. And then it hit me. This was poison night shade. Prolifically growing in a community garden.

While monitoring for pests, I noticed something was eating the cabbage and leaving gruesome large holes in the head. I pulled up the plant and found nine snails, huddling underneath the leaves. They were promptly punished by a preschooler with salt.

The next day I found 11 more snails on that same cabbage. The cabbage has been rescued to my fridge, and the snails have been trampled into mush.

Confessions of a Gardener

July 3, 2013Leave a comment

I don’t always garden like I should. I’m too economical with both time and money.

I attempted to prune my tomatoes this year. It lasted about a week and then I could care less. Research doesn’t necessarily support pruning anyway.
My garden is weedy. I love black plastic mulch and couldn’t dream of gardening without it. I don’t mind weeding, but eradicating weeds is also not high on my fun list.
Except when you buy new tools like a Hori Hori and a winged weeder. Than weeding takes on a new amount of funness, although I’m not even close to a weed free garden. In my defense, I’m pretty sure there are weed seeds in the irrigation water, and the space hasn’t been properly gardened for years: there is a good seed bank to battle against.
Oh, and I could never fully convert to organic gardening. I like glyphosate. The weed patch mentioned in preceding posts is now a dry weed graveyard. Combine a well timed application of round-up, high temperatures, and no water, and the only thing hanging on is a couple of bindweed plants.
In the front I planted some ornamental grasses. They look good, but lack a filler to combine them all together: portulaca, lobelia, some showy annual that makes you stop and look. I did seed some flowers in there, to see how they would do. Seeds are cheap, or in this case free since I had a bunch of random flower seeds on hand. Next time I think I’ll stick to transplants. I can seed vegetables fine, but they only time I have had success seeding flowers is in containers.
I can justify the expense of a large vegetable garden: but I find it harder to spend a bunch of money on flowers. I might if I had a permanent garden I could put perennials into, but with a rental it is not going to happen.

I want a garden I can go out and enjoy, and if I don’t feel like working I don’t. My garden is never perfect: it is simply good enough. And good enough right now at least means zucchini, tomatoes, cucumbers, and snap peas.

Water Shortage

June 20, 20131 Comment

This news story was extremely interesting to me. I grew up in Lehi, and my parents still reside there. To summarize the situation: the city is running out of drinking water. To counteract the shortage they are telling residents to not use culinary water on their lawns.

Shouldn’t people already be doing this? Lehi has a pressurized secondary system in place, and I am at a lose as to why someone would use culinary water when secondary is available. One issue might be water pressure: my parent have always had less than desirable water pressure, both in and out. But I see many residents watering their lawn daily and it’s a no brainier why. I would guess the majority of people over irrigate, in order to maintain a nice, lush, artificial green lawn.

So here is some simple irrigation advice:

If you are in Utah, use this site. It makes it easy to know how often to water.
Get a free water check if available.
Irrigation is variable throughout the season. Irrigation clocks should be changed frequently, in response to changing weather conditions.
It is better to have some plants die than to run out of drinking water.
Lawn likes cooler temperatures and goes dormant in the summer. The yellowing grass is less than attractive, but it does not mean it is dead. To keep lawn alive, as little as one irrigation a month is sufficient. Dormant grass does not have to be a landscape horror, but rather a sustainable method to reduce water use. (See here)
Reduce lawn. Turf-grasses require a lot of water in order to maintain a green lush appearance in the summer. Many groundcovers, perennials and shrubs and even some alternative turf-grasses require a fraction of the water required of a traditional lawn. Hardscapes, water features, and mulched areas also use little to no water.
Improve the efficiency of the irrigation systems. Signs of a bad irrigation system include: dry patches intermixed with green, often in circular pattern; rotars and spray heads running at the same time; excessive water run-off; and no head-to-head coverage.

I currently reside in an apartment. The grass is lush, green, attractive. It even has mushrooms growing in it. It is pampered with plenty of irrigation water (from the culinary system) every other day. It has been irrigated the same way since the system was turned on. Although the lawn does look nice, is it worth it? For me the answer is no. I believe the lawn could be nice and green (minus the mushrooms) with far less irrigation water. The lawn has a shallow root system, and does not react well to stress. Because of this, I do not consider it healthy. It is certainly not sustainable: as seen in Lehi, culinary water is not inexhaustible. We should not run out of drinking water in order to keep our lawns green.

For more information see:

Basic Turfgrass Care

Turgrass Water Use in Utah

Inexperienced Trimming

August 15, 20121 Comment

I cut my own hair. My hair was annoying me and I had no desire to take the time to go get it cut. So I pony-tailed my hair and went at it. My method was simple, unoriginal. I made one ponytail at the nape of my neck and cut, and cut off layers in a separate ponytail stretched over the top of my head. Trimmed it up and here it is:

I like it just fine. My hair is naturally curly, and hides mistakes pretty well. I might have hairstylists or others cringing. But I cringe over this:

If people prune shrubs with nothing but hedging shears, I can cut my own hair with kitchen scissors. Some things are better left to people who know what they are doing, like haircutting and pruning. But a lot of times it doesn’t matter: it will grow.

Landscape Bids

November 22, 20111 Comment

I was recently asked to look over a few landscape bids for a friend of mine. The project was mostly a large stretch of lawn. I was a bit taken back by some of the practices that they listed.

Bagged lawn clippings: All that specified how to do lawn care maintenance mentioned that they would bag and take away all the lawn clippings. It was stated like this was a good thing, preferable to other methods. Oh my. Basic good garden techniques: leave the clippings. They basically add the equivalent of a pound of nitrogen a year. As long as you are cutting the lawn regularly and using a good mulching mower they aren’t a mess. Even then, they disintegrate within a couple days. If anyone out there is still bagging, please stop. Your lawn will thank you.

Lawn spray program: This is included a four step fertilizer program, complete with weed killers, pre-emergent, grub killers, etc. Never mind that there isn’t actually any crabgrass or other annual weed problem in the lawn to necessitate a pre-emergent, or any widespread grub or insect problems. As mentioned earlier, bagging clippings would add a pound of nitrogen, meaning one less fertlizer application is necessary. I still thing four step fertilizer programs (as seen advertised by fertilizer companies) is excessive. We’re not talking about a sports turf or heavily used lawn. Most of the lawn is hardly used. Two, maybe three applications a year would be sufficient to maintain a green healthy lawn. And wouldn’t it be great if one of those applications was actually a layer of compost? I also don’t like that the chemicals are going to be poured on, without monitoring for possible weed or insect problems that might be present first.

Those were my two main problems. I wish all companies would include more detail on their bids. Saying that the lawn will be maintained doesn’t give me much confidence that the company will actually be there no less than once a week making it look great. It was also interesting to see the bidding price. Anywhere from $8,000 to $1,500. The lowest was underbid, I’m wondering how they stay in business charging so little.

If you are thinking of doing landscaping, seriously consider looking into buying this software. It makes the whole bidding process a lot more manageable, and includes information on sustainable practices.

Seeding a Lawn

November 11, 2011

This story starts in the spring when the horribly pruned English walnut was removed from the front yard. This was wonderful. Now we have a beautiful view of Mount Timp, no more hazardous tree right over the house and way less clean-up. (Note: don’t harshly prune, or more accurately ‘top’ your trees because they are right by the house and might fall on it. Severe pruning will only make new wood weaker and the hazard will be worse.) Now the only problem was the front lawn was fine fescue. Fine fescue is a wonderful grass for the shade, but in full sun it just gets stressed.

I decided we needed to redo the front lawn. So I set to work trying to kill it. I sprayed it with round-up, waited a couple weeks and sprayed again. I did it a third, even fourth time. Expect the lawn had gone dormant because I was spraying in the heat of the summer. Round-up kills only activily growing plants, and my lawn wasn’t growing so it wasn’t dying either. Eventually I gave up trying to kill certain patches and tilled it up.

Prepping the ground for seeding

By this time it was the end of the late summer/early fall seeding window. Late summer, or about mid-August to mid-September here, is the best time to seed a cool season grass. To prep the ground it was tilled and then rolled out with a sod roller. I seeded the lawn with a dwarf tall fescue, using a fertilizer spreader. With the spreader, I went up/down and across several times to make sure it had full, even coverage. It came up, but pretty spotty and some of the fine fescue came back too. So here is what it looks like now:

Patchy, new grass

I haven’t despaired. I re-seeded just yesterday. This “dormant seeding” should pop up in the spring and cover all the current bare spots. Plus grass will naturally fill in by itself. (That’s one of the reasons we plant it.) But I think I should have seeded it better in the first place. Here are some things I did wrong:

I should have tried and killed the lawn in the spring, not summer. It would have been actively growing in the spring and actually died. Instead, I still have fine fescue in the lawn. I could have also irrigated it more in the summer, but I’m not a huge fan of drowning lawns in water.
I didn’t quite irrigate enough right after I seeded. I think this is why it came up a little patchy. Next time I’ll irrigate two or more times a day right after seeding to make sure it doesn’t dry up and germinates more evenly.
I was a little late in seeding the lawn. I wish I had a few more weeks for the lawn to establish before winter.

The one good thing about this was I spend about $30 total for all the grass seed I needed along with renting the sod roller. Seeding grass is a lot cheaper and it can get good results if you don’t make the same mistakes I did. I recently saw a hydro-seeded lawn that was seeded a few weeks before I did mine. It is a nice, thick lawn right now. Seedling a lawn can take a bit more patience than sod, but it’s much cheaper and can be a lot easier. If you do seed and get bad results, just take advantage of the next seeding window (spring, late summer and late fall) and re-seed over the top like I did.

Fall Pruning

November 2, 2011

I went to a neighborhood clean-up a few weeks ago and set to work cleaning up the yard of my 96 year-old neighbor. It was actually quite a pretty yard–she still goes out and gardens, although lately the weeds have gotten away from her. I set to work weeding and cutting back perennials and doing other fall task. Then I started freaking out because people were pruning horribly wrong.

There’s some basic pruning rules that were being ignored. I’m not going to try to overly explain them here, but they include cutting back to a bud or branch angle. This is apparently not common knowledge, but it should be. It is included in about every book or instruction on pruning, but maybe it also needs to be attached to every set of loppers sold at the store. I went over and tried to show people how to do this a bit, and also cleaned up some cuts.

But the main mistake was that people were pruning in the fall. In our climate, fall is simply not a good time to prune. With winter coming, a fall pruning can make a lot of shrubs and trees less able to deal with the pending cold. Don’t add it to the list of fall clean-up tasks. The only pruning I would do is very gentle pruning of things like shrubs that are attacking all people who attempt to greet your front door. Mostly, just let it wait until later winter to early spring, or whenever is appropriate for the shrub. (That might require a bit of research. It’s better than killing or mutilating your plant.)

This is a lilac. I attempted to clean it up a bit, but it’s horrid. A shrub should never look like this and especially not in the fall. A good pruning right after it blooms should help it out more, but for now the damage is done.

Tree Staking

October 26, 2011

I went to a park up in Ceder Hills (the park was really neat with a triple story playground). While there I noticed a gorgeous tree with a trunk that looked like this:

This is after I attacked the girdling wire with a pair of hand pruners. The tree was not badly staked to begin with, but that was years ago. They did cover the wires, but the material they used has degraded, and the wire has started to grow into the tree. Without intervention, the tree will be girdled and die. Unfortunetly this is pretty common.

I wrote about tree staking a while ago, and how I staked a few trees that needed staking. If you go and look, it is very different than what you normally see. The most common mistakes made with tree staking is:

Staking too often: Many trees simply don’t need staking. A tree should only be staked if it is wobbly or tilting to one side.
Staking too tightly: When finished the tree should still be able to move about, just prevented from tilting too far in one direction.
Leaving it on too long: Staking material should always be removed after the first year. That’s the main problem behind the staking job above.

I contacted the parks department and they at least said they send someone out to see if the trees are properly staked. The trees actually shouldn’t be staked at all anymore–but hopefully the problem will get fixed. Better than my pair of hand pruners did.

Braithwaite Family Blog Archive

Tag: blunders