I can't give you any help because I suffer from the same symptoms. You could have been writing about me. I think my reasons are:

1) A mother female guilt thing of "I can't spend money on myself, it is more important that ds comes out of college with as little debt as possible, that the dd has the clothes and other must-haves that teens need to survive"

2) Definately a lack of confidance in the design.

3) I am too frugal for my own good.

4) The Litle Red Hen Syndrom, I'd rather do it myself.

5. What will I do if it is ALL DONE?

6. What if I change my mind? Known to happen frequently.

Can you take a part of the yard and bring it to acceptable completeness? That will not take as much money as trying to do the whole thing. It will give you some confidence and some satisfaction. Remember, that plants are like furniture. You can move them.

A complete area can even be expanded on later. I'll use everyone's favorite (favourite for you northerly folks) of the foundation planting. It is a good place to start. A simple functional foundation planting one layer thick will give you unity and a look of completeness. Then you can go crazy with all the mismatched plants that you have collected in front of that as the spirit moves you and get away with it because of the built in unity and look of completion.

Don't make huge beds with the idea of filling them later. Make the beds respond to your plants and expand them when you are expanding your planting. It will look like a five year old in his father's clothes, if you play to the "grow into" mentality.

You are in the predicament that I always warn people about who want to by pieces and parts to grow a bargain landscape into a real landscape. Landscaped gardens tend to want to grow away from a design rather than towards it. I say that because the hope is that all the plants will somehow know to acheive the right growth rate to eventually meet at some perfect proportion to one another. If you start with that proportion, you can maintain it as it tries to break away. It is much harder to herd it to come together and the time wasted as an unattractive landscape is more valuable than any money you can save.

Complete an aspect of the garden and then build off of it, or complete the background for a few areas knowing you can expand them later. Once your unity is established this way, it makes your plant collecting and other experiments not only tolerable, but enjoyable. Without unity, everything looks like a mess no matter how great or interesting the plants are.

I hope this helps.

I have some of the same issues. I mulched out a large area and put some larger plants in (the "bones")- and then froze on the fill in.

So, I divided some plants that I already had that I knew would do well, and have let that work itself out for the last several months. I am not unhappy with the way it looks. It looks okay (boring to me, but probably more "designed" to others) and I won't feel bad about ripping it up later.

I think you want to "make it happen." If some kind of frugality is getting in the way of making it happen - and you have a decent sense of what you want, maybe dividing some of your plants or starting some multiples from seed might be the way to go.

I agree with laag that having a background helps unify a lot of things. I started my area with three different shrubs that I really love and 5 ornamental grasses of the same kind that are medium sized, about 9 of a smaller ornamental grass, and two different groupings of three of evergreen perennials, and kind of went from there. The grasses were less scary than the thought of having to move or prune a lot of shrubs or trees and the area does have a certain unity now. It is still pretty sparse and too paint by number for my taste, but as I said, I put in multiple divisions of plants I had and I won't feel bad if I rip out something that I have more than enough of anyway.

Hope that helps.

I think a lot of people think the way you are.
But if you ask people around you, they are never
total finished. Put in the main things, a few
trees and shrubs. Then take your time filling in.
There will always be things you want to add or
replace. Otherwise we wouldn't be called gardeners.
Maybe even plant a few seeds for things you want.
Its a lot of fun and will save you a lot of money.

Gemfire

Thanks for the replies, kindly given. Laag, that does help because of your focus not just on start small and add, but more specifically on the design issues and how to make the starting and adding work better together.

One thing that underlies my unfinished projects is that I got "into" the lasagne garden idea, or perhaps more the interbay mulch and make-your-own-soil thing. I have rocky clay soil plus a pre-existing sprinkler system whose pipe layout is not completely known to us plus the do-it-yourself factor(smallish-not-wanting-to-admit-now-in-middle-age-lady person) means I was avoiding big dig & till projects. I have been fairly successful in building sort of mounded beds that cold-compost over time and turn into good soil, and support good plant growth. But, since it takes time for the soil to be ready for planting, I felt I needed to get busy making dirt, and so did tend to make some largish areas and THEN try to figure out what to put there.

But with the help of this forum (can you say, hit Frankie in the head 5 times with a hammer?) I may be making some progress.

Frankie, I am sure we share some DNA. Laag has given you great advice.

I used to do things like you described, a bit here, a bit there, and it might look good for a few weeks if everything happened to bloom at once, then it would slowly disintegrate because there was no structure to hold it together.

Then I grew up, and made the final product a priority over my puttering-in-the-garden fun. I upgraded my checkwriting abilities (some things demand more zeros). Forced myself to look at the big picture, not the little seed packets and six-paks of annuals on sale. Paid for professionally installed irrigation so we can travel and not worry, and it was so cool, and so painless, they did the whole job in one day, and were so careful about all my goofy plants. Bit the bullet and reworked large sections of the garden at a time, with a priority toward major structural plants and weed control. I learned that sometimes the answer to "Where should I put this plant?" is "In the compost heap."

It's still not ready for the pages of a magazine, but it looks much much better than it did, which is very satisfying. Waiting for things to grow is excruciating, so start now Frankie. Time to break down and buy a truckload of good topsoil, or you'll be dead by the time your garden is mature. (I'm in your age group, maybe older.) Carpe diem.

Many of us are with you all the way, Frankie. And I agree, Laag has certainly gotten to the heart of our problem and has given us all some good advice.

My problem is just as you describe in being afraid to go out and buy a large number of things at a time. My hesitation is because it drives me absolutely insane to think there is a plant in a pot out there that needs to be put in the ground. If I've bought it, then it must go in the ground NOW (or at least this weekend). Don't know why, because good common garden sense tells me that if it's in good condition, I can probably keep it in that pot a teensy bit longer. So, without knowing exactly why (except it has kept me from obsessing over the above), I've started doing pretty much what laag describes...eating the elephant one bite at a time instead of trying to kill the elephant with an air rifle.

I used to hate to dig up and move, but now do it with total abandon. And like Catkim says, sometimes it's best to just move it on over to the compost pile. Maybe it's a middle-age attitude. Several of us seem to be suffering from it.

What's that saying? The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago; the second best time is now.

Time to break down and buy a truckload of good topsoil, or you'll be dead by the time your garden is mature.

AMEN, Catkim! Frankie, when I started to retool my mom's garden for myself, unlike your more noble 'do-it-myself' mentality, I had laziness, a heat intolerant metabolism, need for immediate gratification, AND middle-age to deal with;^). I got the recipe for an amazing soil mix from Keeyla Meadows' Making Gardens Works of Art: lots of lava rock, rice hulls, etc--you can improvise at your local landscape supply yard; sometimes they'll do a mix for you. I was lucky enough to find it locally, and blew a few hundred bucks on several cubic yards. Had the stuff delivered, had local inexpensive labor distribute it into curved berms on top of my bad soil and mysterious irrigation system, and sheesh! Every shrub and perennial I put into that fluffy stuff was growing like gangbusters in 3 months! I've never spent more worthwhile money, garden-wise.

If you created such berms, 1-2' tall x 2-3' deep, took laag's advice planting your foundation plants into them, you could then add the same soil in front of them as ready, in shapes you want, and plant your menagerie as you wish. This strategy has the additional advantage of raising the level of your foundation plantings so they both appear taller from the gitgo, as well as actually growing faster because of the quality of the soil. By the time the root systems of said shrubs (or whatever else you plant) grow through the rich soil and meet up with the bad, they're so happy and thriving, it doesn't faze them!

Most important of all, the results are so satisfying that it makes the whole process FUN! You deserve it, girl. GO for it!

Karen

This is great. I am very encouraged and I do now have a little truck and so my plan (for the soil issue) is that I can build on my original lasagne-startup and finish off an area with a truckload of good stuff instead of painful layers. I went nursery-hopping just this weekend, after our local garden show, and actually started looking at "the big stuff" as well as noting, well, this price here is a little higher but this is one good-looking example of this shrub, this baby would look good RIGHT NOW. So I'm going back to my drawing board with some bigger, more structural ideas.

My question is, most people end up moving several times, and yet "garden homes" are rare enough that most people have to start over again in a typical move. How do you handle that? So when you finally figure out how much a garden really means to you, and how hard it is to achieve that sense of age (in the GARDEN!), it's too late to live in one place for 30 years to grow your own, or you leave one behind and won't have that again. I tried hard to find more of a "garden home" when I moved 4 yrs ago, but still being limited by school zones and other variables, I couldn't find just the right property. In retrospect it may be easier to remodel a house to your specifications than to gain garden maturity. I did obtain fairly flat ground which I wanted and which is not that common in my city--many tri-levels and steep slopes. I'm already having trouble realizing that I need to make my "design", if I stay here, work for me at 60, 70...oh my! Oh well, it's the gardenING, not just the garden.

But this speaks to laag's repeated advice to invest in at least a few significantly-sized items that do give your landscape a good start on its "presence".

Also, maybe the designers could write a book on what to look for in "landscape value and potential" for prospective home buyers. "Home Buying Guide for Gardeners"

I'm in that gene pool too... on the nearby Help me add colour thread I explained that it is all my husband's fault :-) but honestly, I have literally backed into the process of designing the garden. I have spent years just looking for places to plant the plants that I collect, and it only recently occurred to me that the space needed to be designed. I started with the front hell strip - first project I actually completed in twelve years of living here, and then began a complete rethink of the back yard with DH. But we are working in the midst of my accumulated Bits and Pieces. On the other hand, I know the whole Bits and Pieces department, as well as the plants, well enough that once the broad strokes are now drawn, the planting and decor falls into place quite nicely. For the hellstrip alone I used up a whole stack of scrap marble slabs, two scavenged sinks, a piece of sewer pipe, and a whole bunch of rocks I had no other use for.

I enjoy tinkering with my beds and I don't think my landscape will ever be "complete". I do agree with the importance of setting up a good foundation of specimen trees and shrubs, hedges (if you want 'em), foundation plantings and ground covers. But after that, be as fickle and idiosyncratic and frugal and daring as you like...then change it all next year.

Long-time lurker - Tibs, I think we were separated at birth!!

I'm printing out this thread to refer back to when I get sidetracked and go from one thing to another.

Carol

It nice to know that there are others who took the same initial approach that I did.
Early this spring I decided that I was going to avoid the bargain shopping trips, and also not buy anything unless I knew exactly what I needed for a specific location, and then I researched my options thoroughly. Except for a few perennial purchases, which I knew I would want anyway, I stuck to my new rule.
Here is how I fixed my mess. I looked at every major area and decided what I did or didn't like about it, then tried to figure out how to correct problems that needed correcting. Once I did that, I made lists of everything I had, determined which little micro-climate each plant would grow best in, then proceeded to place them based on size, color, shape, etc. One thing that helped me "see" where to put the shrubs and trees was to use 4' tall stakes where I was thinking about putting something. This gave me a solid point to look at instead of depending on my minds eye. It served to be an invaluable exercise. I also used a person holding a long stake to simulate a tree so I knew exactly where it should go.

Another thing that helped was that I made a measuring stick out of an 8-foot long, 1 x 1 piece of wood by placing marks on it for every foot. This helped me place each shrub neither too close or too far from anything. Im not always accurate at eyeballing the spacing of anything over 3Â, anything over 5Â IÂm hopeless.
After moving nearly everything, I only needed to purchase 4 major shrubs and one tree. Their spaces were planned and there were stakes in the ground marking where they needed to go. Planting happened almost immediately after the plants were brought home.

The first layer is nearly completed, and perennials are filling a lot of the small gaps for now. Next year I will tweak the second layer, but itÂs so much easier to see what needs improving because 90% of the first layer was thoughtfully planted. I made a few mistakes, but that was near the end of all the plant moves, my body was screaming at me to stop, and it was just beginning to get hot, so I rushed.

I ended up making over 130 plant moves this year. I tossed out or gave away plants that didn't fit, and I got rid of a couple of things that were more trouble than they were worth. It was a waste of money, but a lesson learned.

What really surprised me when I finished for the season, was that by establishing the first tier and placing trees where they needed to be, the garden seemed to come into itÂs own, or that it could come into itÂs own despite there being a lot of area that need to be filled. I donÂt know if that makes sense, but what I do know is that I am cured of bargain plant shopping, and rescuing sad little plants from big box stores and other places who have no business selling plants (ignore those little clematis from the big box store, they donÂt count). I found it much more satisfying to carefully select plants before going shopping, and I had a lot more time in the garden than I would have if I had kept up my usual garden center hopping habit.

Most of those garden centers carry the same plants, have you noticed that? As soon as you establish the bones of your garden, and you can do it if you stay home instead of going out hunting, you will be in a position that will allow you carefully choose what plants you really want. You will be able to keep up with planting and it will be much more enjoyable.

Thanks for posting Janet. I am pretty sure there are a series of phases that every gardener needs to go through. You could not have gotten where you are now without learning the lessons of the previous phases.

BTW, one of my favorite garden "tools" is a wooden marking stick. I actually have three of them. One is 8' long and I cut an 8' board in two to create 3' and a 5' sticks. They are great when trying to measure out in the dirt and mud.

- Brent