Picture Perfect

We see them in the fashion magazines—photos of people walking down the street with black strips across their faces. Their identities remain a mystery, but their outfits are still visible so that fashion editors can use them as glaring examples of fashion don’ts. Years ago I began compiling a list of the gardening and landscaping blunders homeowners commit while attempting to beautify their properties. Though my list grows longer each year, there are three mistakes that remain near the top. (I should know: A blunder doesn’t make my list unless I’ve committed it.) Like those offending outfits, our landscapes are on display, though we are tucked away in our houses with the drapes drawn, like those black strips across fashion faux pas faces. To ensure that you stay clear of the “gardening police,” take a step back and assess your landscape before you plant even one flower this season.

Too Much Turf
Drive through the older residential neighborhoods in our cities, and you’ll see fine houses on small lots that feature a pleasing ratio of lawn versus landscaping. In the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s, grass lawns accounted for only about 60 percent (or less) of a typical city property. The rest was filled with evergreens, at least one large oak, maple, or elm, and ample plantings of smaller ornamental trees, blooming shrubs, and flower gardens. Apparently, homeowners were more interested in nestling their homes in nature and viewing trees, leaves, birds, branches, and blooms than flat carpets of lawn.

Fast-forward to the 1950s. Americans fled the cities and created the suburbs. Just about anyone could become a landowner, and half-acre, one-acre, and two-acre lots became the norm. Left behind with the grit and calm of the city was this pleasing lawn-to-landscape ratio.

Sure, we needed grass lawns for our children to play on, since the concept of kids convening at a nearby city park was also left behind. Money was certainly a factor; as lots became larger, sod was cheaper than devoting half of a half- or one-acre property to trees, shrubs, and gardens. So suburban lots featuring 80 to 90 percent lawn became a mindset, which is why those fancy brick starter castles being built today in Rogers and Eagan look like dollhouses sitting on a pool table.

Cool it with the lawns. Even a ratio of two-thirds lawn to one-third trees, shrubs, and perennials will allow you to nestle your house and create an attractive overall landscape. Once established, areas planted with trees, shrubs, and perennials take no more maintenance time than is spent fertilizing, watering, and mowing an equal area of lawn.

Test Your Soil
Eighty-five percent of your gardening success—or failure—depends on your soil. It’s the foundation of your landscape. Before you start devoting any time or money to landscape improvement, drop $30 to $45 on soil tests. It may be the best gardening money you ever spend.

Do-it-yourself soil-testing kits are worthless compared to a comprehensive University of Minnesota Soil Testing Lab analysis. Contact your county extension service to get started, or log on to extension.umn.edu, click on “Garden,” then “Yard & Garden Line,” then “Soil Testing Lab.” Submit two to three samples ($15 each) according to directions, and in about a week, you’ll receive a report telling you what you need to do to turn what is probably lousy dirt into good gardening soil. It’s the magical ingredient for beautiful blooms and lush shrubs.

Access Your Trees
Are we ever afraid to cut down a tree these days! We’ve some vague notion that the deforestation of the Brazilian rain forest relates somehow to that stupid red pine a previous homeowner planted too close to the house, rattling windows on the second floor every time the wind picks up. There is no correlation between the two.

The first step in gardening is to fix your tree situation. Cut down trees that have grown too large for an area, are diseased, storm-damaged, or on their last legs. Too often homeowners allow scraggly spruce trees featuring nearly as many dead limbs as live ones to loom large across a property and are unwilling to cut them down because they’re old. Ten years later, these trees look so ghastly and are such a storm liability that the homeowner grudgingly has them removed. What has actually been lost is ten years or more of new tree growth. Those trees should have been cut down when the house was purchased (or built) and replaced by fresh new evergreens—trees that would now be sixteen or twenty feet tall and looking gorgeous.

Of course, if you sense that the main flaw to your property is a scarcity of trees (particularly evergreens, essential for winter interest), revert back to the start of this column, till up great stretches of that vapid lawn, and plant away. 

Gardening editor Don Engebretson hosts The Renegade Gardener Hour on FM–107 Sundays from 11 a.m. to noon.