Landscaping On A Budget

Even (especially!) when we're designing for ourselves, the budget is never big enough. But there are tangible ways to make what you've got go farther. Wish I'd been the first to write up these ten ways to save money when installing your new garden landscape.

Happy New Garden!

Cold and blustery as it may be, there's no shortage of seed catalogs arriving, brimming with mouthwatering optimism. As usual, I want one of just about everything; I'm especially enamored with High Country Gardens' new pink and orange Agastache, which I can imagine pairing with a blue Agave attenuata, and Burpee's new tricolor basil, a perfect partner for a striped tomato.

What do you want in your garden this year? Or, more accurately, what do you want your garden to do for you this year? Do you want it to save you time? Save you money? Do you want to help save the planet? Or save your soul?

Gardens can do all of these things, and more. If you're into new year's resolutions, make this one: that you will enlist the services of a great garden designer ("great" being subjective, as in, "great fit for you") to make even a small improvement to your yard. I guarantee you, the effects will be anything but small.

Going Straight

You're a romantic at heart, and you want your garden to feel soft and flowy, so you're absolutely positive you want curved beds, an undulating margin of lawn, and a gently meandering pathway. Nope, no straight lines or hard edges for you, right?!

Right?

Actually, straight edges may be the best way to make your garden complement your home. After all, isn't the biggest, most significant element on your property… your house? And no matter what style it is—rancher, Tudor, Eichler, Codder—it's got straight edges. So when your garden reflects and extends those lines out into the landscape, you visually anchor your house to its site.

Furthermore, straight lines are the essence of practicality in the garden. If you're working with small spaces, you can arrange elements far more efficiently using straight edges rather than curves (think of the contents of your refrigerator: do cylindrical bottles or rectangular items nest together better)? Even rectilinear furniture is more efficient: a 4' x 4' square table, for instance, allows 16 square feet of dining space, while a 4' diameter round table only offers 12-1/2 square feet of surface area within the same envelope. And when it comes to lawn, it's just plain easier to mow in straight lines than follow irregular curves.

All this isn't to say that your yard has to look like a checkerboard or feel like a prison cell. Even if you used nothing but straight lines, you still can install plants that drape and billow over the edges, and use irregular planting patterns and varying shapes. And if you're fortunate enough to have property that "goes wild" at the edges—whether adjoining a natural open space or a neighbor's naturalistic garden—it actually makes sense to loosen up your bed edges on that side, for a smooth transition that takes full advantage of borrowed views. And if your yard is asymmetrical or unbalanced, or has a particular trouble spot, curves can actually be used to advantage, to distract the eye past the offending area.

Don't get me wrong: I've designed plenty of gardens based on curved lines, including one that was almost nothing but curves. Even in a starkly modernist garden, arcs provide necessary counterpoints to all that rectilinearity. But even if your style is as far from straight as can be, don't make yourself a prisoner to curves. Often, going straight is the best way to go.

A Bug In The System

And we thought Y2K was going to be bad. In the last 24 hours I've lost my Mac due to an illogical logic board, and now my email due to a power outage wherever those email servers serve emails. Dammit, people, I'm workinghere!

Actually, it's ironic because I've recently moved away from hand drafting and begun doing most, if not all, my work using CAD. So the project I was going to finish up this week is now sitting in the hands of an Apple Genius somewhere, who undoubtedly doesn't appreciate the intricacies of my work. And the email notification from the aforementioned Apple Genius, informing me I may have my repaired computer back? It's sitting in limbo somewhere, feeling unloved.

Technology. Now helping you waste more time than ever.

Garden workout

We all know that spending some quality time in the garden, even if it's not quite power gardening, is good for the soul. But it can also be surprisingly good for the body.

For instance, a half-hour of digging and tilling can burn 200 calories. The same time spent trimming shrubs manually can burn about 180 calories, as can weeding a garden bed. Raking leaves for 30 minutes: 160 calories. Mowing with a push mower: 240 calories per half-hour. And my personal favorite, turning a compost pile, will burn about 250 calories in 30 minutes (although I simply can't imagine going at it for that long, myself).

It's worth mentioning, though, that it's all too easy to overexert yourself, because most of these activities are low-load/high repetition. So while the first few whacks with the hedge shears seem like nothing, after minute 30 you've probably earned a couple of Advil. Ease into it with these tips:

Start slowly, if you haven't been exercising regularly. Build up to longer times and heavier chores.

Warm up and stretch muscles before, during, and after gardening.

Take care of your back and knees by bending at the knees, not the waist, to keep your back straight when shoveling or lifting, and by using long-handled tools and knee pads.

It's easy to forget, in this era of leaf blowers and power tillers and soil drills, how enjoyable the physical aspects of gardening can be. Take advantage of the next dry, clear day to get back in touch.