Landscaping on a Budget

Landscaping can be expensive. For many homeowners, it is this reason that causes landscaping becomes an afterthought. But landscaping doesn’t have to be expensive. There are a number of expensive misconceptions that can be eliminated and many cost saving tricks to save you money in the long run. So stop spending excessive amounts of money on your landscaping, and use your money wisely.

As a Registered Landscape Architect with several years of experience, I have a few tips and secrets to share with you. Not only will these save you money, but some of them are better for the environment.

Lawn Care

Most of what people know about lawn care is provided to them directly from the lawn care industry. Fertilizer companies, lawn maintenance companies and contractors all want your money. It’s no coincidence that they recommend fertilization and other expensive services. First, let’s start with your lawn seed. If you have an opportunity to reseed your lawn, you will save yourself a lot of cash by selecting appropriate varieties.

Generally speaking, you want to cut back on Bluegrass varieties. Bluegrass may look nice, they will brown out and die in the summer months if they do not receive ample amounts of water. Watering your lawn is not only expensive, but it is often prohibited by many local governments during drought conditions. You may even save yourself a fine. Look for fescue varieties as they will be much more drought tolerant and easier to maintain. If you’re buying boxed seed, the box should indicate what seeds are within and what conditions they should be planted under.

Avoid things that require lots of water. Don’t be limited to one specific type of seed. There’s nothing wrong with mixing a few varieties. Especially if you have a lawn with a range of conditions (wet areas, dry areas, shady areas, etc.), you will want to get a number of types that will be appropriate for each condition. Your town may have a bulk seed supplier in the area. They may mix custom orders for you based on your needs, or they may have their own pre-mixed blends. The staff will be able to help you get exactly what you need. Using the right seed is the first step.

As for fertilization and herbicides, my recommendation is to use them sparingly. Unless you are absolutely horrified by the appearance of Dandelions, they really aren’t hurting anything. You can save yourself quite a bit of money on herbicides if you can live with a few gold and white flowers each spring. But if you insist on using an herbicide, you can usually cut back on the recommended distribution rates by up to 10% and still reach the desired result. Some of the newer spray-herbicides, which hook up to your garden hose, may appear to be more expensive, but many have a larger coverage area and end up being cheaper in the long run. As for fertilizer, your lawn would do just fine without.

Here’s a tip: Get your lawn aerated once per year or once every other year. Unless you have grubs or other insect problems, compaction is likely to be the real problem behind most of the bare spots in your lawn. Aeration combats this compaction by pulling plugs out of your soil and dropping them in place. The plugs will only be visible for a couple of weeks, but then your lawn will look beautiful. Especially if you have long and snowy winters, or if you have a lot of children playing games in your yard, aeration is nearly essential. Without aeration, no amount of fertilizer will help your lawn. Your local landscape maintenance company probably offers this service. It’s relatively cheap, and you may find that the fertilizer isn’t necessary at all.

Note that if you plan to reseed your lawn, you should seed after your lawn has been aerated. While we’re speaking of fertilizers, let me beat down a long standing misconception: Lime for your lawn. It’s not necessary, especially without a soil test. Lime makes your soil more alkaline which can be a problem if your soil gets too alkaline. Don’t do it. And finally, the best fertilizer for your lawn is your lawn. Use your mulching attachment for your lawnmower so that the clippings are dropped in place. This provides organic matter for your soil, and it’s nearly free. It also saves you the cost of garbage bags.

New Plantings

Most of the misconceptions in the landscape industry deal with new plants. Bigger is better, right? Not necessarily. If you’re planning on hosting a wedding later in the year, then it might be worth buying larger plants. But if you can fight back the urge to have the “instant effect”, you should be buying smaller plant material, especially trees. The problem lies in portability. Trees and shrubs growing in the wild will have a lot larger root mass than you are led to believe based on the pots you see at the nursery. A typical field-grown 2” caliper tree (about 10′ tall) will have roots extending as far as 15 feet from its trunk.

Mature trees have been known to have roots extending from the trunk a distance equal to three times its height, so long as there are no obstructions. For obvious reasons, it is not feasible to provide the entire root system of these trees. So root balls are sized appropriately so the tree will live, but allow for easy transport. So why does this matter? A larger tree is missing much more of its relative root mass as compared to a smaller tree.

When you plant new nursery stock, the tree’s first goal is to re-establish its root mass. This is called transplant shock, and during this time, the above-ground size of the tree may change very little. So that larger tree must spend more time trying to recuperate its root system. As a general rule of thumb, you can expect one (1) year of transplant shock per each caliper size of the tree.

In a practical example, you can plant a 1” caliper tree (6′ tall) next to a 3” caliper tree (12′ tall) at the same time. The tree may grow up to 2′ per year. The smaller tree regains most of its root mass in the first year, and it can grow steady for the next two resulting in a height of 10′ before larger tree even starts growing. By the time the larger tree starts growing, the trees will appear to be relatively the same size. Now you can buy these smaller trees at home depot for less than $100, in many cases. The same species at the larger size from your local nursery may cost as much as three times that price. But that’s just the material costs.

Here’s another important fact: Regular watering is essential for survival during this transplant shock period. You’ll only need to water the smaller plants during the first year, where the larger plants may require additional watering for years to come. Especially knowing that in 10 years all these plants will look the same, don’t you think it’s worth having a little patience?

One of the biggest ways to save money is to select the best plants. Do your research. You’ll want to select native plant species that are well suited for your area. Those Asian varieties may look nice, but they will not be nearly as well suited for your yard as a native plant. Besides, native plants are often cheaper. If you’re unsure about what is native or not, check with your local environmental organizations or the state’s Department of Natural Resources. Even among your natives, some plants won’t handle certain conditions such as shade, excessive sun, wet soils, dry soils or even salty conditions. You need to evaluate the area where you want to plant.

Observe for several days to determine these conditions, and keep these in mind when selecting your plants. Most nurseries will have tags that tell you the ideal conditions for a plant. If not, ask for help, or check online resources. And don’t be afraid to mix it up. You want to avoid monoculture, a large number of plants with the same species. A monoculture results in disease susceptibility.

Blights and widespread plant disease is not entirely uncommon, and they can evolve over time. But if you have one-hundred Pine Trees planted along the back of your property and disease comes around that specifically attacks Pine trees, guess what? You’ve lost your entire buffer. Diversity in your landscape not only provides some protection from this, but it also provides a much more natural appearance.

Other Considerations

Landscaping is more than just lawn, trees and shrubs. There is a whole industry that caters to landscape maintenance and installation. You’d be surprised how many products are available that are absolutely not necessary.

One example: Tree wrap. It has been found many years ago that the wrapping of your tree trunks does very little to help a given tree survive. It can actually be a hindrance. It may over-insulate the tree trunk in the winter resulting in bark splitting, a condition known as sun scald. It can also be host to insects, not only providing a nice home for them, but preventing you from detecting insect problems early. I offer one caveat. There are a number of products designed to protect tree trunks from weed eaters and lawn mowers. These are often hard-plastic tubing designed to shield the trunk, but they can be installed without actually touching the bark. These are acceptable so long as they are removed before the tree grows too large. Ideally, trees should be installed with a mulch ring, and this product won’t be necessary. But such practices aren’t always possible.

Plant insect sprays are not always necessary. There is a relatively new philosophy known as Integrated Pest Management (IPM) that strives to avoid the unnecessary use of chemicals. The idea is that you identify the problem and potential damage before you spray anything. For example, Hemlocks are known to acquire a pest called Wooly Adelgid, an insect that looks like cotton around the stems and leaves.

First of all, that’s one reason to avoid the plant. But if you have one in the yard that gets this pest every year, consider other factors. If the plant is jammed in the corner of your yard between a fence and some ugly shrubs, it probably doesn’t have enough air circulation. Remove the ugly shrubs, and you’ll greatly help the problem. Maybe the tree is getting too much sun. Eliminate some of these other conditions and the tree won’t be as stressed, there’s a great potential that the tree will be able to combat the pest itself.

There are also a large number of pests on other plants that can be controlled simply with soapy water. Soapy water is much cheaper than dangerous chemicals. For that matter, if the pest isn’t going to truly harm the plant, there’s no reason to spray. Let nature take its course, and perhaps the pest won’t even be a problem the following year.

Tree staking has long been a part of the Landscape industry. For a long time, it was believed to help trees grow properly. Not-so-current research has shown that staking can actually be bad for a tree, preventing the trunk from developing properly. It’s been found that trees may actually need to sway in the wind so that it knows to develop a stronger trunk or a wider root system. Unless you’re planting a tree in areas susceptible to incredibly windy conditions, those stakes might not be doing anything for your tree. Besides, they’re ugly.

Let’s talk about your planting beds for a moment. There are a number of new mulch products available today that can hit you hard in the wallet. Some of them, like black licorice root, have proven results, but they aren’t necessary. I recommend a simple shredded hardwood bark mulch. It’s the industry stand-by, and many nurseries make their own. Avoid those colored mulches like the red-dyed mulch. They’re expensive and they don’t look natural.

Here’s a secret, they aren’t natural. Most of these mulches are actually recycled shipping palettes, and I used the term recycled loosely. They are literally fed into a chipper, dyed and collected to sell to the ignorant. Not only will you find a few missed nails in your mulch (that could be dangerous), but these palettes are often treated with chemicals to prevent rot. These chemicals may not be the best thing for your soils. Then there is the element of the edge of your bed. There are at least several dozen products available to “edge” your bed. They may keep the mulch in place, but they all have one major element in common: Grass will always grow against them requiring you to weed-whack along them every week. Get rid of the edging products. Instead, dig your own edge.

In the early spring, before you mulch your beds, take your best spade (sharpen it if you must), and cut yourself a nice, deep, angular groove along your planting beds. Stick the space into the soil just at the edge of your bed and kick it out. You should end up with a clean edge to your lawn with about four (4) inches of soil exposed.

You may need to touch up once or twice during the summer as you see fit. This keeps the mulch in, it looks great from the front (and who stands in your beds anyhow?), it allows you to run the lawnmower over the edge of it (no pesky grass to be weed-whacked) and its free. If you were to hire a landscape contractor to prepare a bed for you, this is exactly what they would do.

And finally, weed-barrier fabrics: They work, but only for the first year. As your mulch consistently breaks down into soil, the weeds grow in that, on top of your weed barrier fabric. It also cuts down on the water getting to your plants, even the water-permeable fabrics. Every little bit of water helps, and even the best fabrics cut out at least 40% of the water. Weed-barrier fabrics are for under your flagstone walkways, not for your planting beds.

Final Words

I’m sure that there will be a number of dishonest Landscape Con-artists, I mean “Contractors”, out there that might be pretty upset that I exposed these tips to you. But all I’m doing is giving you more knowledge to be wiser with your money. I have an ulterior motive, however. As I mentioned a the beginning of this article, many of these tips are also beneficial to the environment.

Cutting back on water usage, limiting fertilizers and eliminating useless clutter in your landscape will greatly impact the environment. So while you’re saving money, I won’t mind if you pretend you’re doing all this to save the environment.