Planning your Garden.

How to plan a garden

The secret to a successful garden is planning. The more time you spend planning your ideas, the better your garden will grow.
Gardening truly is one of the finer things in life. Watching flowers transform from seeds to bloom is very gratifying. But gardening failures are hard to take. Imagine how upsetting it is to buy bulbs, carefully plant and fertilize them only to have the flowers die because of poor soil or not enough sun. This is why careful planning is important to the success of any garden.

To begin your garden blueprint, get a blank piece of paper, graph paper is even better. Draw an outline of your house, garage, storage shed, swing set, deck, trees, and any other existing landmarks in your yard. Don't forget to include walkways or paths. You should also include existing flower beds or gardens. If you have children, think about high traffic areas.

The next step is to determine the sun's pattern in your yard. Use a pencil to color the areas of your yard that are mostly shaded. Make notations for areas that get morning sun, areas that get afternoon sun, and areas that get full sun. This is an important step because the amount of sun each area receives will determine what plants you will plant there. Take into consideration the mature height of trees in your yard. Just because your oak tree is only 15 feet tall now, doesn't mean it will stay that height. The taller the tree, the more shade it provides.

Next, mark any areas that drain poorly. If you do not have a sprinkler system, mark where your faucets are. You won't want to plant flowers that require lots of water in hard to reach places in your yard.

Finally, draw in your windows and doors as well as outdoor sitting areas. The view of your back yard from different vantage points is an important consideration in planning your garden.

If you are planning to do any deep digging, you should find out where electrical, sewer, gas and phone lines are located in your yard.

The next step is to have your soil tested. Before you can choose plants and flowers for you yard, you need to understand what will grow best in different areas of your yard. You should take samples from several different areas of your yard, since soil can vary from one place to another. Check with your local county extension agency for soil testing information. Once you have the results, you may need to take steps to improve the soil before you can plant.

Now comes the fun part - choosing plants and flowers. Attach a piece of tracing paper over your blueprint. By using tracing paper, you can create several different designs and then choose the pattern you like best.

Before you start designing flower beds, you should answer a few questions:

- How much time do you want to spend maintaining your garden?

- What type of edges do I want for my flower beds?

- How much yard or grass do I want left in my yard?

- What color schemes do I want in my yard?

- Are there any areas in my yard where nothing seems to grow?

Now begin working on your tracing paper. Start with the shady areas. Consider where you want perennials and where you want annuals. Get a list, or better yet, a gardening book with color photographs of plants and flowers that grow in the shade. On your blueprint, use colored pencils to shade the area with the color of the flower or plant you are putting there. Think about what colors complement each other and the height each plant or flower will mature to.

Now move to the sunny or partially sunny areas of your yard. Think about the type of border you want for flower beds or paths. Don't forget to plant for each season. Make sure you have flowers that bloom in early spring as well as flowers that bloom clear up until the first frost. This way your yard will never be void of color.

Next, work the areas of your yard where nothing seems to grow. Talk to your local nursery about groundcovers that grow well in your area.

The final step is to draw in the location of planters. While you may change the flowers in your planters from year to year, they are still an important part of the overall design of your yard.

Once you have your entire yard mapped out, now it's time to begin the work. Don't be afraid to change your plans if you find something you like better. Most of all, have fun.

Steps For Planning

There's a lot of practical information available about keeping plants alive and making them thrive, but what about the practical considerations for making an appealing haven for yourself?
Here are some preliminary basics for setting out to plan your garden:

First of all, what don't you want.
Prying eyes of nosey neighbors?
Sight or smell of belching vents?
Noisy garbage trucks in the middle of the day?
Figure out what you're dealing with - visual pollution, noise pollution, smell pollution, privacy intrusions, or all of the above?
We'll help you block out these unwanted elements.

Next, imagine your space, and let your imagination run wild.
Don't just think horizontally, plants fill up those vertical spaces as well.
And remember plants grow! So you'll need to do some projecting into the future - what will it look like in 6 months, in a year?

The best way to get a clear sense of what you're doing is to sit down with pen and paper and draw. Diagram the available space and what you'd like to see in it. Have fun with it, make several different pictures and use color - you're never too old for crayons.

Practical Considerations

Container gardening can be as simple as putting a potted plant on your porch. But even the simplest garden can become a big mess or a legal nightmare without proper planning. Here are a few things to consider when setting up your containers:

Have good catch basins or other ways of dealing with drainage so water run-off won't annoy your neighbors, or cause stains or damage to your building.

Use existing structures for shade and support. Make sure your balcony, windowsill, or roof can handle what you're going to do on it.

For hanging supports, find a solid beam to put plant hooks into - remember, your plants will get heavier as they grow.

Put rollers under big pots before filling them with plants and soil, so you can move them if you need to.

Give yourself room to get between pots to clean. Make sure you can sweep and even mop around your plants. Inevitably, water will run off and leaves will fall.

Make sure you can get close enough to your plants to water and take care of them.

Imagining Your Space

One of the best parts of creating a container garden is just sitting and imagining what your garden could be. This is your chance to be creative - express yourself. Here are some things to think about while you're imagining, to help you make the wisest choices for your particular needs.
Where are you are going to sit? Is there room in your planting space for a folding chair? Two chairs and a small table? When you sit inside and look out at your garden, what will your angle be?

Where are you going to move? Do you walk through your garden regularly, or will you only be out there when you work on it? What do you do out there now?

What do you want to highlight or conceal? Are there any features already in your planting space you really love or hate? These could include any sort of built-in item, such as a birdbath, barbecue, a particularly interesting rain spout, or an ugly wall or view.

What plants will work for you? Look at other people's plants - look in stores, houses, restaurants, etc. Look at surprising "volunteer" plants (weeds) that have taken hold around town. Put all of these into the mill of your brain and see what comes out.

What about the size and location of your containers? How many plants will be needed to fill them properly? Will those plants be in sun all day, part shade, or all day shade? Will you want perennials that may need to be moved indoors during winter?

It seems like a lot of things to keep in mind. But, pick a nice day, sit outside, and no doubt you'll regret you didn't have more to think about.

Diagramming

The joy of not having a beautiful, organized garden is getting to create one. And there's no easier, more financially viable, way of figuring out what your options are, than sketching them. Sit down with a pad and pen (or even better, crayons or colored markers), have a cup of tea, put on some music and let your mind wander. Don't worry if your artistic talents make pansies look like action stick figures.
Don't be shy filling up the space in your container garden - a single red geranium will be lonely for friends of all shapes, sizes and colors. (Have you ever met a prejudiced geranium?) See what colors contrast or combine to your liking. Play with size and shape, height and texture. Make many, many drawings to see what works and what doesn't. Consider planting a combination of annuals and perennials to keep your garden blooming for months to come. And think about how your garden will look throughout the day, in different light conditions.

As long as the plants within a single container have similar light and water requirements, you can go wild.

Projecting

You're finished designing and planting your container garden. You have a clever container, it drains well and you're all set. Right? Not quite. Have you left your plant some room to grow? Just like healthy children, healthy plants will grow up, and move out of the house and only visit on holi...well, not quite but you get the idea. Keep the expected size of your mature plants in mind. Plus, remember, plants often grow "out" as well as "up."

In the final design of your container garden, imagine where each of the plants will be in one, two and six months. Don't pack them in too tight, like a new pair of jeans around Christmas you want to leave some room for growth. Commercially purchased plants usually list the expected height and size of mature plants on the information tag. Read the tags carefully. If the plant has no tag, ask for help or look it up in a reference book.

Can you visualize color? Don't settle for just varying shades of green. Have you planted anything expected to bloom in other colors? Blooms are an encouraging sign that your garden is thriving and they give you something to look forward to.

Your Visual Field

To make the most of your garden, think about where you will be viewing it from. Will you be literally sitting in the plants (the childhood tree house is a good model for the above-ground urban garden), or will you gaze at the from your desk, on the other side of the living room? Or do you just want them to look great from the street?
If you are really planning a container garden (instead of just an assortment of plants in pots), you'll want to be sure to keep the big picture in mind - just like a garden in the ground. Think about how different plants will look next to each other Of course, the good thing is that you can experiment - if that tomato overpowers your delicate flowering chives, just pick up the pot and move it closer to those purple basil.

The amount of space you're working with is important as well. As you choose your pots and plants, think about whether your 5-foot porch can really handle 3-gallon tubs of sunflowers (unless, of course, you like the jungle atmosphere). Scale is the key - the pots and the plants should fit the surrounding. But don't go to the opposite extreme and get 15 brown plastic pots in which you grow only 18" green plants - boring is not the goal!

Remember that just because your mom taught you that roots need soil, that doesn't mean that the soil can't be in the air - think about adding hanging baskets to create an extra dimension of variety. Be sure to include plants of different textures and heights, regardless of whether you are planting, flowers, herbs or vegetables. Different varieties of plants often have different colors and textures that can add spice to your garden.