Landscape Planning

Start with the front

Front yard before Redesign

Planning a landscape is a personal and practical process. you want to plan your yard for your use. But you don't want to have the "weird" yard of the neighborhood. You know which ones I'm talking about; Pinwheels and figurines everywhere. Or George of the Jungle, where's the house?

The front yard is your face in the neighborhood.

Keep it simple and neat.

Feature Plant

You may have a great specimen plant. A large palm or a blooming tree. Build a nice garden around the base. It will give it more presence. It also will make the plant happy when you create gardens. More fertilizer for everybody. Grass uses up most of the fertilizer you might give your tree.

Enjoy my Video to get ideas for focal points and adding intrest to your landscape

Pay attention to color. The easiest way to do this is break color up into two families; Warm and Cool.

The warm family includes, red, orange, yellow, brown,(mulch brown, not dead brown). Yes the mulches are part of the color scheme. Red lava rocks are a good example of this.

The cool family includes, blue, lavender, white. Gray, green or white stone accents work with this color scheme.

Cool colors

White works in both families and is a nice way to give the eye a break. Purple comes in warm and cool. To help you decide which one, does it have more blue in it or red? You can see the difference between a "hot" purple (red) and a "cool" purple (blue).

Now, Homework Time

• cool colors or warm colors?

• manicured shrubs, loosely natural, or both?

• lots of green lawn or mulched gardens?

• does it have an inviting place to sit?

• Tropical look or traditional

• Native with lots of ground cover?

• Art accents tastefully done?

Write down what you like. Since you will be looking around your neighborhood, you will have an idea of what will be happy in your yard. Remember to pay attention to the amount of shade you have. If your neighbor has large trees but you don't, you are talking about a different landscape plan. Full sun plants are totally different from shade plants.

Don't drive up River Road in Rockledge and and expect to get the same results in Satellite Beach. You can go for the same look but the plants might have to be totally different.

As we go along in our plan you will learn about different gardening techniques. You don't want to spend a lot of money on plants that won't do well. Do it right, step by step. Put together your plan and don't make it hard.

We will be going over the different kinds of plants that thrive in our county. We have several "zones" here. And each city has different watering situations. Some places have re-use water. Others only have well water which can have a lot of salt in it. If you are watering your yard with city water you will really want to conserve.

For now do your homework. Start writing down what you like. Decide what kind of "face" you want your home to have.

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