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Show The Serious Gardener By Ben Freestone LANDSCAPING ON A BUDGET WHERE TO START? Probably the first thing you'll need to buy for your new budget landscape is a comfortable lawn chair! Sounds pretty optimistic, but it points to the key ingredient in-gredient in developing any new landscape or upgrading an existing one-and that's planning. Then, armed with a sunny day, pad and pencil and, of course, your new chair, settle down in the front yard and let your imagination take flight. It doesn't matter that you can't draw a straight line or that neighbors and passersby slow down, stare and think that your lonely, barren patch of earth has finally gotten to you. You're traveling the Grand Tetons, the gardens of Japan or the great formal gardens of Europe. Forget for the moment the dust blowing in the door, the mud, the heat. What you're doing of course is developing some rough, basic ideas on paper of what you want your yard to look like. It's important to sketch in the major plants and trees the full size you want them to grow, being sure to position them where your house will benefit most from sun and wind protection. Don't get bogged down in petunia beds and rock gardens. The features that will be the most critical and most important impor-tant in your landscape will be trees, fencing and decking, terracing, lawn and groundcovers and vegetable garden space-in space-in just about that order. Next, it's back inside to analyze the available free time you think you can spend working in your yard after it is completely landscaped. If your time is limited think about reducing the amount of lawn to be maintained and instead put a ground-cover ground-cover such as seedum, low-growing junipers or rock or bark chips over plastic mulch to reduce maintenance and watering. water-ing. Decide on definite perimeters within which you will work. Be careful not to take on more of your property than you can afford to landscape and maintain. Perhaps you can reduce the landscape land-scape perimeters of your present yard and turn the remainder into a grassy, fruit-producing orchard. Or, turn it into a "wild" area where native plants such as blue spruce, aspen, cactus and even sagebrush can thrive with little or no care. Such areas, once established, aren't likely to turn into weeds or quack grass patches pat-ches if you don't water them. Investigate sowing native grasses such as crested wheat or buffalo grass in unlandscaped areas. These grasses are relatively low-growing, won't invade adjacent areas, and need little or no water or fertilizer; plus, they keep unwanted weeds to a minimum. Then, back inside your landscaping containment area, watch to be sure you're solving problems rather than creating more work. You can define the perimeters of your contained area with rows of trees, shrubery, loose hedging, railroad ties, logs, concrete curbing curb-ing or fencing. The important impor-tant thing is to establish these borders and make them visible so your efforts ef-forts inside won't look haphazard. Your principal shade trees are the first plants to purchase since these will provide protection for people and other plants and usually take the longest to grow to an effective size. Then, work down from there as you can afford it to the intermediate in-termediate and small size shrubs and trees. Lawn areas are next in importance impor-tance to trees, and such details as permanently established perennial and annual flower beds will be your final consideration. Visit nurseries to find trees and plants that appeal ap-peal to you and ask the nurserymen what their growth characteristics are likely to be in this climate. Take copies of your house plans or sketches sket-ches and ask for comments com-ments and suggestions. Buy books or visit the library to learn as much as you can about the trees and plants you like. Finally, Final-ly, learn or ask how to take care of the plants you purchase and then be consistent in taking care of them-since keeping them alive is the last and most important aspect of your landscaping budget. |