Countrified

It can be daunting starting a large garden from scratch. The scale of it makes it hard to know where best to start, even when you have lots of ideas about what you like and what you want to create.

To help us get started, we talked to neighbours with fabulous gardens and very helpful and knowledgeable people that worked in local nurseries, and visited some spectacular local rural gardens in a recent ‘Open Gardens’ Day, and accumulated this list of tips and wisdom from those in the know.

Getting a plan going

1. Draw a simple plan of your block and existing buildings as close to scale as you can. Grid paper is great for this. Alternatively try one of the many landscaping apps available.

2. Add any current and future paths, driveways, patios, garden sheds, lawn area, play area, veggie patch, greenhouse, fire pit, pool, bin area, retaining walls, etc. Also include any existing trees or plants that you want to keep, and any of your neighbours’ features that impact on your space.

It doesn’t need to be fancy like a landscape designer’s drawing; it just needs to show you what spaces you have to play with.

3. Do you need windbreak or privacy plantings? Living on your block for a while makes this decision (and the next step) much easier to decide on. If yes, draw them on your plan. Try and keep to your scale so that you can see what spaces are left. Most hedges and windbreaks will take up a metre or more in width, depending on what you decide on.

4. Look at the empty spaces on your plan, and think about whether you want or need any other large or ‘structural’ plantings such as shade or feature trees. Draw them on roughly the width you’d like them to be at maturity. It may be a wide tree for shade, or column-shaped trees to line a driveway, etc.

Choosing plants

1. If you haven’t already done so, try and decide on the ‘look’ you want for your garden. I love Pinterest for this! Your particular climate might narrow your options here, and the style of your house might too. It can be hard to decide on just one style, so at least make some general choices; for example, lush English greenery, or earthy Australian natives and grasses, or a mix? Colourful flowers, one theme colour, or just greenery? Lots of species, minimalist with one or two, or something in-between?

4. Super important: visit local plant nurseries (not big chain stores), trawl the internet, or talk to neighbours with good-looking gardens, and find out what grows well in your area and climate. Starting out with plants that have the best chance of surviving and thriving will save you lots of time, money and angst later! If you have a very exposed or windy site, make sure you mention it – at the risk of sounding melodramatic, it can be a life-and-death situation when it comes to plants! If your favourites don’t have good odds of doing well, there are almost always similar alternatives that you can love instead.

5. Start checking out pictures of the recommended plants and make lists of what you like. List a few options for each category you will need; for example, hedges, shade trees, small shrubs, climbers, etc. Don’t get bogged down in the detail of the smaller items at this stage. Focus on the large and structural items that will become permanent fixtures in your garden.

6. Righto, decision-making stage. To narrow down your options, go through each category on your shortlist to determine which of your short-listed plants are best suited to the position and aspect of the planting site:

• Will the plant get enough sun (or too much)?
• Is it sensitive to wind or frost?
• If it’s a low-lying spot, can it cope with being waterlogged?
• Will it need to cope with strong afternoon (westerly) sun or wind?
• Imagine it at maturity: how tall will it get, and based on that, is it far enough away from the house (or pool) so that all the leaves don’t blow in, and it isn’t a fire or falling hazard?
• How wide will it grow, and does it have enough space to spread out to that size, or will it need constant trimming?
• Will it impact your neighbours in any way, such as creating unwanted shade or dropping leaves and branches? If so, talking to them before you take any action will help avoid potentially nasty issues later.
• Will it give shade in the right spot at the right time?
• Does it need to be deciduous or evergreen?
• Will it sucker or run and take over your garden?
• Is it high maintenance in any other way, and are you happy to put the time in to maintain it?

There might be other considerations specific to your site, but these questions will get you started.

When you’re ready to plant….

1. Buy locally grown plants if you can, and aim to avoid plants from big chain stores that might have been raised in greenhouses or trucked in from completely different climates.* This is more of an issue if you live in an area prone to weather extremes – such as big temperature variations from day to night, frost or snow, low humidity, extended dry periods, etc. – as some plants will keel over from the shock of the change of climate.

2. Prioritise wind break and privacy plantings if you need them, and wait a few years for the wind breaks to get established before planting any wind-sensitive plants – or put up screens or other windbreak structures if you can’t bear to wait!

3. Get the other ‘big bones’ in – the large or structural components such as shade trees and hedges. You don’t have to worry about establishing entire garden beds before planting your trees – you can add beds around the trees later when you’re ready. Just ensure you plant the tree in a mound of soil the same height as the future garden bed, as trees don’t like having soil added around their trunks above their original planting mark (it can cause them to rot and die).

4. If you are impatient like me and want to get some favourite plants going, or need some colour and can’t wait for your garden beds to go in, use pots – just make sure they’re over-sized for the current size of the plant, to avoid ending up with pot-bound plants before you’re ready to get them into the ground.

Other useful tips and advice:

1. Virtually all plants and trees need regular water while they get established, so depending on your water supply, you might need to plant in stages rather than all at once.

2. Following on from the tip above, some type of irrigation system is very highly recommended for large gardens! Even when your garden is well established, it’s likely that it will need supplemental water at times, and hand-watering becomes a massive task. Options range from fully-automated systems with timers, operated from a central point, to simpler and less expensive set-ups that involve putting irrigation pipe with drippers or small sprayers throughout each section of your garden, and plugging your hose into the end of the irrigation pipe each time it needs water.

3. Don’t be paralysed by fear of making a mistake! If you decide later that you’ve planted something in the wrong place, don’t worry – in lots of cases you can relocate it… within reason of course! 🙂 Just get some advice about the best time to relocate that particular type of plant before you try it, to increase your chance of success. For deciduous trees, the winter dormant period is ideal.

4. Accept going in that you will lose some plants. It doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a crap gardener, so don’t give up – there are a whole range of reasons why a plant may fail to thrive – or die – despite your best efforts. Even the expert gardeners I spoke to said that gardening is an ongoing learning curve and they still make mistakes or have failures, but were quick to point out that the fails were worth it for the sheer joy of creating a garden and watching things grow. One way to reduce the chances of plants ‘mysteriously’ dying off is to only buy plants that have been grown and raised in local conditions. Another is to make sure your soil is right for the plant; for example, your soil’s clay or sand content and ability to drain are big factors for a lot of plants.

5. Find out when the best planting times are in your location and for your chosen plants – it can make a big difference to how they go! It’s usually spring and/or early autumn but some plants have specific needs or preferences.

6. Avoid any temptation to cut corners when preparing the planting site. There’s an apt saying that you might have heard already: ‘Buy a $10 plant, but dig a $50 hole’. For example, some plants and trees like acidic soil, some don’t; it’s worth doing five minutes of research on the plant’s preferences and adding the right stuff to the bed or hole at the start to give it what it needs to thrive. Any large hardware store or garden shop will have everything you could need.

7. Don’t skimp on the weed suppression and mulch! A bit of extra effort at this stage makes a huge difference to the plant, its water requirements, and the amount of ongoing maintenance it will need, and will absolutely pay you back in saved money and time later.  We learned this the hard way with the first garden bed we established. It has been a constant battle to keep on top of the weeds, and when we gave up and ignored it for a while, it became so overgrown we now need a machete to get in there 🙂

8. Try to hold off buying plants until your planting site is ready to go. I’m guilty of never following this tip but hopefully others can benefit from my mistakes! I’ve learned that the pots that plants come in are often only just big enough for their current size, and spending even another month or two in the same pot, especially during growing season, can put stress on the plant. In warm weather, undersized plastic pots can dry out quickly, allow the roots to get too hot, and/or the plant can quickly become pot-bound. And stressed-out plants don’t cope very well with the shock of planting, so you run the risk of losing them or, at best, ending up with a plant that always looks a bit average. If you can’t resist buying them, at least try to keep the pots out of direct sun and keep them watered. For long delays, consider re-potting them into larger pots.

5. Finally, if you have a really tricky site, or you find it hard to visualise the final result you want, consider engaging a landscape designer to give you some ideas or a plan. Otherwise, keep trawling the internet for images and ideas you like, spend some quality time with your block drawing every now and then, and trust your own instincts and taste. In no time you’ll have a plan you love and a satisfying project which will keep you busy outdoors for a long time to come!

*A couple of years ago I was surprised to see a plant I loved – which we’d grown very successfully in Sydney, but which is not at all frost-hardy – for sale in a large hardware chain store in Canberra. I asked a garden section employee if this was some new variety that was frost-hardy, and he very sheepishly told me that all their plants are trucked down from Sydney, and no, this plant would only survive in this region if the owner was able to create a micro-climate for it, such as a high-walled north-facing garden with brick walls! That particular chain of stores closed down recently, but it’s very possible that other chains follow the same practice.