Restore Life to Your Landscape – Planning your Plantings

If you’ve been following this series from the beginning, you’ve taken the time to learn your site characteristics and develop the aesthetic you’re going for. You should also now have a palette of plant choices that will thrive in your site conditions, from keystone species that carry the weight of the local ecology to supporters that provide beauty and structure.

If you haven’t gone through the journey yet, I definitely recommend starting from the beginning: Restore Life to Your Landscape: Introduction

With all the research and preparation under your belt, it’s time to start planning your plantings. We’re going to take everything you’ve researched, discovered and learned, and work it into a living design that feels natural, provides vital ecological function, and provides joy every time you step outside.

Grab a graph paper pad and a good pencil and let’s get started!

Revisiting Your Site

We touched on getting to know your site conditions in-depth in a previous article in this series, but it is good to revisit the subject as you’re starting to sketch out your plan. Landscape design is very much an art – The land, existing structures, and sky are your canvas, and plants and hardscape elements are the medium.

Working with a 3D canvas is probably the hardest part of designing a landscape – Because of the way objects shift around depending on your vantage point, it can be somewhat difficult to visualize how your designs might play out in real life.

Vantage Points

Humans are very much creatures of habit, following the same paths each day.

Take note of vantage points that you frequent – Maybe the view out your kitchen window, sitting on your patio or porch, driving in and out of the driveway, etc.

These are going to be the primary spots you view your garden from, and taking that into consideration can help guide more impactful design choices.

Sunlight Exposure

Take note of areas around your yard and how the sunlight and shade shifts through the day. Note spots that get plenty of sunlight in the morning but are shady by mid day, and note spots that are exposed to the sun in the hottest part of the afternoon.

This is the primary point that will guide your plant placement decisions, as most plants can be divided into either sun lovers or shade lovers, with some additional nuances.

Soil Types and Drainage

Keep in mind soil types and drainage – On our Indiana property, we have several different types of loamy clay, with some spots being more boggy than others. Our immediate region used to be known as “The Black Swamps” by the early settlers in our county – poorly-drained wooded uplands, with a mix of both wet, boggy soils and dryer upland soils.

Keep note of areas where water collects after a rain, and areas that dry out severely – This is going to further impact what you plant where.

Existing Structures & Features

Most landscapes are going to have a mix of existing hardscape features. Buildings aren’t likely to change much, unless you’re planning on adding on to your house or building a barn, but garden features like fences, flower beds, and walls, may be able to be removed or changed if necessary.

Keeping note of what you can and can’t change with existing structure helps provide a foundation to go off of when you start planning planting beds, tree placement, etc.

Translating Your Desired Aesthetic into a Layout

Traditional residential landscaping often starts with a tree here and a shrub there, maybe filling in a garden bed with a few perennials. While this does provide some greenery and can fill the void a little, it falls short of creating the sense of balance and resilience that comes from a design grounded in nature.

Nature-Driven Design works differently. It brings into consideration the way plants naturally grow together in communities, how they layer themselves, and how they shift with the seasons.

Keeping these patterns at the forefront during the planning stage not only helps your design look more cohesive, but function as a healthy, living system.

Step One: Define Your Goals

Before you start drawing anything, it’s good to take a step back and ask yourself: What do I want this space to do? Do you want:

• Summer shade over a patio?
• A burst of color in springtime?
• Screening from the road or neighbors?
• A wildlife haven humming with butterflies and pollinators?

Start writing your goals on one of the graph pad pages. This will help you focus your choices as you get started with the landscape plan.

Step Two: Map the Space

On a new page in your graph pad, sketch an outline of your property – Work in a scale that is in keeping with your property size. Using the typical 1/4″ grid graph pad, I usually use 1/4″ = 5′ for overall plans and 1/4″ = 2′ for close-up details of individual plantings.

Sketch key features starting with your home and any outbuildings, plus any paths and driveways. Don’t stress too much on absolute accuracy with measurements, you just want to give a rough idea of the space you’re working with.

Sketch in any existing trees and flower beds – These are often a good jump point when designing a new landscape. Start sketching in any new planting beds you’d like to add – Your goal is to fill up at least 20% of the available land with vegetation of some kind.

If possible, try to note any microclimates – Maybe the east or north side of your two-story house sits in deep shade, or maybe a dry south-facing slope makes it difficult to grow much. Keeping these in mind will help to both ensure you plant species that will perform well as well as increase overall biodiversity on your site.

Step Three: Build In the Layers

The key feature of a Nature-Driven Design is Layering – Here in forested Eastern North America, that is going to mean a full forest structure, with canopy, sub-canopy, understory, shrub layer, and herbaceous layer, as well as the edge zones between sun and shade.

When designing a layered landscape, you may find it best to draw each layer separately on a page, with anchor references to help you keep your place between each layer. If you are using a vector-based program, it’s very effective to utilize layers within the program for this purpose.

Anchors – The Canopy and Subcanopy Layers

The first layer to establish includes landscape Anchors, which we define as the largest plants in the landscape that anchor the design down. In Eastern North America these are typically going to be canopy trees and understory trees.

Depending on your property, you may already have a large shade tree – Always take note of what you have that you can build off of, especially with trees which can take several years to provide the necessary shade for a woodland.

Aim to plant trees 8 to 12 feet apart with the intent to thin in the future – You can even plan on planting larger, space-requiring plants such as White or Red Oak (Quercus alba and Q. rubra, respectively) or Sugar Maple (Acer saccharum) with faster-growing pioneer trees such as Tulip Tree (Liriodendron tulipifera) and Black Cherry (Prunus serotina) in between. As the longer-lived oaks and maples get a little size, you can release them by removing the other trees, resulting in final spacing 16 to 24 feet apart.

Shrub Layer

The second layer to get established is a shrub layer – Take the shrubs from your plant palette and work them into the design. Some shrubs like Wild Hydrangea (H. arborescens) and Bladdernut (Staphylea trifolia) are typically found in colonies, making for great choices as fillers. While shrubs like Spicebush (Lindera benzoin) and Witch Hazel (Hamamelis virginiana) are more typically found as individual specimens. Keeping growth habits in mind when designing your plantings helps keep your landscape more natural-looking and ensures long-term success.

Herbaceous Layer

Finally, build in the herbaceous layer. Keep in mind balance and growth rates – Try to group compatible species in each area. For example, in our garden Viola striata, Carex flaccosperma and Polemonium reptans have proven to be a good, dynamic mix because they are balanced in vigor and form.

Plant as many different species as you can in your yard for biodiversity, but make sure to plant in drifts of 5 to 7 or more plants for impact in the landscape as well as for sufficient seed set. Take note of the species that do well and the ones that don’t – Over the years you may find that 5 to 10 species are the most vigorous on your specific site, so you can use those species to fill in the rest of your landscape.

While getting your plan on paper, remember the key points of landscape design. Use Contrast, Symmetry and Repetition to give your garden a cohesive, planned feel.

Once you’ve got your plan on paper, the real fun begins: Site Preparation and Planting.