|
A Village in a Garden By Avery Harden Working with your landscapeAn updated landscape is the most obvious, easiest and least expensive thing one can do to realize and maintain the potential of their Loch Raven Village townhome. Yank out those tired old overgrown, over sheared yews and azaleas that look like faded, dull, green plywood mushrooms. This won’t cost much. Lasso them and yank with a truck or, even easier, cut them off at the ground with a chain saw and leave the root in the ground. Just work around the root until it rots out in a year or two. Less is more. Fewer, bigger, lightly pruned plants will do a lot to freshen up a dowdy looking abode. Change the way you prune. Treat your plants like you do your children—nurture them to be what nature intended them to be. Being a tyrant is counterproductive. Stop torturing your plants with excessive shearing. Something is wrong when a yew that wants to grow to 10 or 15 feet tall is perpetually chewed into the shape of a three-foot tall mushroom. There are no goats, cows or deer around to blame it on. If there is not room enough to permit the yew to grow to a more natural 7 to 10 feet, take it out. Decide which plants can be permitted to grow to their normal size and shape, and which just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and should come out. We embellish the nice things we have in our house by throwing out the clutter; the landscape is no different. Ten overgrown, over sheared azaleas with ten different colors, packed into a cramped 75 square feet is no Grandma’s quilt and is not a pretty site. Yank them out and relocate one or two out away from the foundation of the house and throw the rest away. Permit them to grow to the shape nature intended. Fewer, bigger, properly pruned plants will grace the space in a much more appealing fashion. Azaleas have great sculptural limbs, nice foliage and— if not one of the ubiquitous, garish colors— nice flowers. Azaleas, even big ones, are one of the easiest plants to transplant. The roots are compact and shallow. With the right tools — a narrow square-point, long handle shovel and a sturdy pair of boots with a full leather heel for hammering that shovel — and the right time of year, azaleas can be popped out and dragged around the yard like a Lazyboy recliner. If you want to get rid of them, lasso ‘em and yank them out with your vehicle — loosen it first a bit with the shovel on the backside of the pull side. If you want to transplant an azalea, cut a root-ball circle about ten inches deep with the shovel and — if the shovel alone will not pop it out — give it a gentle tug with the rope and vehicle. Be sure to tie your rope to the substantial part of the vehicle’s frame. Don’t yank your bumper off and blame me. Be smart about it. Big yews do not transplant as easily as big azaleas. If a big yew is in the wrong place just saw it off at the ground. Don’t try to pull it out, it won’t come out as easy an azalea and you might damage your vehicle. Do your major digging when the ground is soft. The ground is usually soft in early spring after a winter of freezing and thawing or heaving as we say in the industry. The ground is also soft a few days after a few days of steady rain. Don’t mindlessly burn yourself out on dry hard clay. Work when the dirt is pliable and you will enjoy it. Make landscaping easy and you will enjoy doing more of it. If a proposed chore seems difficult, there is probably an easier way to do it. Be patient, study the situation; a logical, easier game plan will reveal itself. Think of your overgrown, over-sheared plants like a dentist thinks of a mouth full of teeth. Remove the eyeteeth and wisdom teeth and use braces to move the remaining teeth around. Don’t just keep every tooth and hammer the ones that oddly stick out. Again, once you have edited out those tired, overgrown, boring looking plants; change the way you prune. Lose that mower mentality that says you shear your bushes every time you mow. If you should think like a dentist when dealing with your overgrown landscape, think like a barber when pruning. Barbers don’t put bowls on heads anymore and cut what sticks out like my father did back in the Fifties. Plants have interesting sculptural trunks and limb systems— recognize and embellish them. Cutting hair and bonsaiing dwarf trees use the same design principle as pruning shrubs and trees in your yard. Be Careful. |
