Summary: An old landscape design needs to be reviewed and hard choices sometimes must be made – what plants or trees to keep and which plants must go.
When it is time to “retire” and old landscape plan one of the first steps is to take a survey of the property (Landscaping Rehab – The Plan).
When the survey is complete, it is time to study the existing patterns in the design and overall landscape features. Even if you have lived with the garden for years, you may be struck by relationships from the design point of view that you had not noticed before. Sometimes a new landscaping idea is born at this stage, and it is better to have it at the back of your mind when you embark on the next step.
To Keep, Throw or Go
Next, take the plan outdoors and check it against the actual objects in the garden landscape, studying each tree or shrub as you go through the property. Take some digital pictures from focal points to “see” if anything jumps out at you. It is probably a good idea to make two rounds, one a “what I want to keep” trip and the other a “this must go” trip. Use a green pencil to circle plants that without question will remain in their existing position, a red cross marks those that are going to be removed completely. There will probably be a lot of plants that you are doubtful about; you don’t want to throw them away, but you are not certain whether or not they will have to be moved. You may like to put a question mark with a blue pencil against these, or just to leave them unmarked for the time being.
Some agonizing decisions will probably be involved before your new landscape design will be complete, but when the question concerns a handsome, well-grown tree that cannot be moved, don’t decide to cut it down, no matter how ill-placed it is, until you have stretched your ingenuity to the utmost to build it into the picture you want to create. Sometimes the solution is to reshape the tree by judicious pruning. A large existing tree can have a complete garden design built around much of the trees character form.
An important reason for checking the contents of an old garden before you make your plan is that if you dream up a design that enchants you and then find that a fine tree or shrub interferes with it, it will be harder to make a different design, because you will be thinking painfully about the landscape design you must discard.
A Fresh Design of Existing Landscape
When the plan has been checked against the garden and the plants marked according to whether they are to be kept, moved, or thrown out altogether, put a piece of tracing paper over the plan and re-draw it, putting in only features that are without question to remain in their existing positions. This may or may not include walks, steps and walls.
At this point, the landscape planning are the same as with a new property except that you will be modifying an existing situation rather than creating a new garden design.
With a new property, remember, the first consideration is to organize the utility areas, and then to adjust the planting to these. In an old garden, of the kind we are discussing, the plants are there, and it may not be practicable to move them. While a certain amount of compromise is usually necessary, a distinction should be drawn between a desperate compromise and a creative compromise. What appears at first to be a hopeless situation may turn out to be the genesis of a really exciting solution.
Current Landscape Design Review Example – Step By Step
The series of images above, 1, 2, 3, 4, illustrate the procedure described above. The marks identifying material to be kept, discarded and moved have been omitted, to avoid confusion, because of the small scale at which the plan is reproduced. The last figure, 4, shows the design of the garden without the distraction of dimensions and labels. Usually, before a satisfactory solution is found, a number of rough sketch plans are made, without reference to careful measurements. The design is then “tested” by drawing it accurately, and the final sketch plan is based on a foundation of detail that has been thoroughly worked out. A rough preliminary sketch plan may look very pretty, but not stand up to careful dimensioning. The home owner may not want to bother with a final sketch plan; it is included here, as it is in professional work, to convey a pictorial idea of the garden. There is no question that, as a dimension plan tests the workability of a rough sketch plan, so does a final, carefully rendered plan show up weaknesses in design.
The garden taken as an example is typical in essence of thousands of small “inherited” gardens and demonstrates several features that occur over and over again – the crowded foundation planting, the placing of shrubs and flower beds without rhyme or reason, the lack of any outdoor sitting area, and so on. Your situation will be different in detail, but it is more than probable that some of the defects of this old garden landscape will exist and a careful study of the way in which they are corrected should help you to solve your own troubles.
The property could be anywhere in the more northerly sections of the country.
The house is a colonial style two-story residence of mellow, unpainted brick, with white trim. The suggested plan would be equally suitable if the house were of frame, or stucco, or painted brick, but if it were of any of these, the treatment of walls and paving should be studied in relation to the color and texture of the house. A successful landscape job depends a great deal on the choice of structural materials. While contrast is often desirable, too many kinds of material are irritating and destroy the unity of the picture. It is impossible to lay down hard and fast rules for what to put with which; the chapter on building materials will help to clarify the matter. Try looking at buildings around you and noting combinations that jar or please. Observations you make yourself are far more valuable than arbitrary do’s and don’ts.
