Читать книгу Landscaping For Dummies - Lance Walheim - Страница 40

Planning your landscape, installing the structures and plants, and admiring your efforts of the finished project are the most gratifying parts of the landscape process. They’re also the most time-consuming (whether you do it all yourself, or hire help).

Maintaining your landscape is just as important, so make sure you include upkeep in your vision and efforts. It’s not realistic to ask living plants to thrive on neglect, plus they look so much better and stay in bounds when you tend them. Show you care, and your landscape will repay your attention by being a beautiful, fun, relaxing place to be.

If you want less maintenance, here are some good, sensible ideas:

 If you’re often away, traveling for business or pleasure, you may want a yard with hardscape and very few plants. (See Part 2 for more on hardscape.)

 Avoid overplanting or using fast-growing plants that get too large for their space. They’ll need to be pruned or even, in time, removed.

 Having cut flowers in annual beds adds lots of color to your yard, but you’ll need to replant when you harvest for bouquets. Use lower-maintenance perennials or flowering shrubs instead.An annual is a plant that completes its life in a single season, and they’re generally planted once a year; find out more in Chapter 13. Perennials, on the other hand, return year after year and tend to be more full and floriferous as they mature. Chapter 14 explains perennials in more detail.

 Lawns are a lot of work and consume a lot of resources. Determine whether you want one. Consider having a much smaller one, or instead plant an easy-going groundcover. Check out Chapter 16 for ideas.

 If you plan to build wooden landscape elements like decks (refer to Chapter 8) and fences (see Chapter 6), plan on painting or applying preservatives every two to three years. Masonry (brick and concrete) needs less maintenance.

 If you install your landscape without an irrigation system, you end up having to water everything yourself … even if you live in a climate where rainfall helps. For a practical discussion on watering and various options, flip to Chapter 5.