Looking for Landscape Plan advice. Blank Canvas. apx. 1000 sq. feet.
Ned Reyerson - Zone 6b - Kansas
8 years ago
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Comments (11)
Ned Reyerson - Zone 6b - Kansas
8 years agoRelated Discussions
1 Yard, 1000s of Landscapes
Comments (14)Ink- Yep, guilty as charged. Even though I know betterthere have to be some benefits from hours of forum dawdlingI know better in my head, but in practice it's hard not to get overly focused on one thing, forgetting its relationships to the whole. I call this effect the Nose-of-the-Pekinese Syndrome. The intense focus on one spot in the yard is like someone with a huge canvas on which to work. For some (homeowners with established landscape design) the canvas is already filled. But maybe there's that sense that something is not quite right. Something needs to be fixedThese are the folks seeking to renovate their "paintings". They come to the forum and ask, "Do you like the way I painted a pekinese's nose on my painting?" A few are at least aware that a small dog might be called for in the picture. Others paint away, carefully putting a pekinese nose right in the midddle of a painting of a bowl of fruit. Others re-paint a nose on the dog in their picture, but they ought to be asking themselves if a brand new canvas would be a better starting point. Then there are the blank canvas folks. Their new homes have front yards they describe as "blank slates". In the midst of the emptiness they paint the nose of a pekinese. But they haven't yet asked themselves "what's going to happen in my painting?" Is there a young girl in the foreground looking down coquettishly to the pup in her lap while a lovestruck swain leans against a tree looking on? Is the little pekinese a snarling beast preparing to leap? Is the setting a chinese dynastic piece? Should there be a dog in the picture at all or is it a still life of apples and artichokes? Today is my birthday. Oh, I know. My page says January 1, but that ain't so. I mention it here on the chance that you'll forgive the overly played dog metaphor. It's the slice of cake and glass of wine that's doing it! Oh, and don't ask how tough a week I'm heading intojust let the wine flow! Irene- What you're saying gives flesh and bones to what I was trying to get at. I like what you said about emotional distance and then you reveal the twist that you can get attached to your own ideas. I think that's a fascinating aspect of designers and artists. There is all this work that doesn't necessarily leave the drafting board. I think of all the tens of thousands of sketches and detailed designs Da Vinci created but never built. Part of maturing, I suppose, and keeping the creative juices flowing. Laag- I think you hit the flaw in my post. I ended up suggesting rather gross generalities. Your point is well taken that individuality and specifics of circumstances play a significant role in the different ways homeowners think about their outdoor projects and the different personalities, skills and experiences the designers bring to their work. I think somewhere in that long post that was recently resurrected you commented on how little is known of posters when they post about their landscape issues. They may be dealing with constraints that have led them to paint that pekinese's nose and it may be the "best" answer given the specific circumstances. Naplesgardener- I like your synergy image. Kind of reminds me of Da Vinci again and his like, whose work was geared toward well-heeled patrons. Quite the dance to keep the art in the practice while creating the best design for the application and satisfying the person with the cash. I'm still struck by the dreams that people try to fulfill on their single canvases. Wellspring...See MoreFinally ready for landscape planning
Comments (16)The tree at left would be near the driveway. The tree "beyond" is a "bookend," as you described it, of sorts. If you look at the house from the right, the new addition has much blank wall so foundation shrubs are used and a tree (or more than one) are set off that side of the house. At the front, the lighter green is grass and the darker is groundcover. In general, the colors in my sketch are meaningless except to differentiate one plant from another. They are not intended to influence colors of plants you may use (even if they inspire you to lean in a particular direction.) With shrub selection, usually you're trying to first fulfill size and shape requirements. Leaf color and bloom color are usually less important in the hierarchy of requirements. Instead of me suggesting what plants to use, you might take the picture to a local garden center and get some suggestions for what will accomplish the goals shown in the picture and grows in your area. (You'll need to research the plants to make sure they don't get too large.) I'm giving you vague suggestions, but you have the task of transferring ideas to a plan, allocating space for plants and deciding on all the particulars of the arrangement. For example, I show a tall shrub immediately to the right of the steps. (It looks like it's behind a lower shrub and annuals, this being 2-D.) I envisioned that not in line with the steps, but set deeper into the picture field. At that location there is a lot of blank wall on the house so the height restriction is not set by windows or any such feature, but by the eaves or maybe even something higher. (I can't see that space.) But you're there and you can toy with the idea of a small (12' to 15' ht.) tree in that space or a large shrub since there is room for it to grow tall. You don't need to be limited by the exact suggestion I showed in the sketch. (A 'Carlesii' viburnum comes to mind for that spot, however!) There are really no plants to identify in the sketch. It's a matter of learning and deciding what plants could do the things shown. There might be many possibilities to choose from. (But be mindful of my earlier remark about heights and trimming.) To add clarity to your above questions, I'm showing those things marked up in the plan. (I didn't color in all the bed, though) ......See MoreBlank Canvas Contest
Comments (27)The filter for this can be done easily and cheap. I have read on filters made for going around a pump such as two colanders with quilting batting or nylon scrubbie inside. These will filter and add area for beneficial bacteria to grow. I have one that came with my set up and have altered it to my own needs. It's a 300 gallon setup that I put a bigger pump into since I went to a 1000 gallon pond. I also have made a skippy filter that is the waterfall. This is a rubbermaid storage tote that has a pipe put in the side for an outflow. I placed rocks around and over it to hide it although many people actual use the bin to grow plants in that will give you more room for growing. The pipe that comes out of mine is just pvc but since it extends out and over the pond I have cut up bamboo pieces only a quarter inch wide by 7-10inches long and glued them to the pipe to give it a better look. In doing this I made the bottom pieces in and extended and uneven manner to get the water broken up more and give a better sound to the waterfall rather than the faucet sound that I first had with all at the same length. You can find a info on the skippy filter hopefully attached, but if not a search on it will direct you to it. I follow the basic design but scaled it down from the directions. I ended up using the clear totes you can get for storage and a shower drain connection for the out flow connection then the pvc as said before. I will warn you that trying to make a clean and precise cut was much harder than thought. The container started to cut then ran a crack out about an inch some aquarium silicone and the fact that the drain kind of pulls it back together have kept it from leaking. If you do a search in this forum for colander filter you can also find the type of filter for building around the pump. As for the bridge I have looked at a few online and it seems that they are for decorative use only due to wood type or sizes. If possible you could cut some pieces and attach to the underside so they are hidden but are still reinforcing the actual structure. If this is not an option you could cut pieces to attach to the bottom but set back from the side and use it to contain soil under the bridge which should give you the support needed, but give the illusion of a void under the bridge. As my last suggest on the bridge you can fill the area under the bridge and use creeping jenny or some other very low growing plant to hide the dirt. One last thing I will mention is to test the amount of water you can push through any waterfall you might come up with. The higher the water has to go (head heigth) the less water flow you will get, and you want the entire pond to travel through the pump at least once and hour but twice an hour is best. You may want to do a test of this before getting everything setup. You can do this just by setting up a simulated heigth and timing it while it fills an old milk jug and doing the math that follows. Keep on reading on this forum and you will find a wealth of knowledge as I have, not to say that I am a pro at all but I'm much better off now than I used to be. Here is a link that might be useful: skippy filter...See MoreHow would you start a new 1000 sq ft bed?
Comments (13)First - the same advice my grandpa and every good gardener since has given me and that, if I set it aside in my hurry toward getting going, I have always regretted my folly... You only get one chance to completely prepare a perennial bed. All the work you do later will be piecemeal... amending on the surface, moving a plant, etc. Take the time now. Do this right. You may be anxious to see the plants in the ground - aren't we all?! - but extra hours spent now will save extra weeks of amending later. Now... some very unhumble opionions... landscape cloth - absolutely don't do it! I won't give you all the reasons - check out this thread... put simply, I believe Satan devised landscape fabric to take gardeners, who tend to be close to nature and God, to the darkside. Voles and moles and rabbits and deer and slugs and various complaints might get a gardener to swear once in a while - but landscape fabric can drive a perennial gardener to making blood sacrifices by moonlight. http://www.perennialnursery.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=53069&p=463105&hilit=landscape+fabric#p463105 Two techniques to consider. For killing grass - and turning it into compost at the same time... solarizing. I haven't done this for a while, so you can google up some more specific directions, but the basic process is to water the area and then cover the part you want to kill with clear plastic and weight it down around the edges. It is going to heat up the soil, killing the grass and lots of the weed seeds in the top couple of inches as well. The timing is surprisingly short if there is direct sun - with the shade you are describing I'm not sure how long this takes... I planned an oval garden for a family a couple of years ago... they cut the plastic exactly the size of the oval and they said the kill pattern was amazing... healthy, fertilized green grass right up to a sharp edge, then composted grass and grass roots, easy to dig up into the next layer they spread over it. Second technique - lasagna beds... lots of good info if you google... layered construction of soil on top of the current soil. I think you could lay wet newspaper on top of the grass and do the lasagna thing and not even have to remove the grass. (I'd still do the solarizing first, just because you never get the layers thick enough at the edge and some really deep rooted grass always seems to fight its way up through the stuff. In that oval bed I described, the folks tilled some leaf compost in with the dead turf and called that the first layer, then did some layering over the top. Eventually they mounded it some. I think mounds in island beds like you are describing are nice features, allowing a "presentation" of plants without relying solely on the height of individual plants to make those in the center or farther away from the viewpoints show. A Sagae or a Liberty in the center of a bed will be higher than a June in front of it... but a Sagae at the top of a one-foot mound in a lawn bed will be spectacular. Caveat - I don't think solarizing would cause any issues for your established trees... you are providing extra moisture and you don't do it long enough to heat the soil very deeply... and I'm pretty sure maples won't mind having their roots covered if you do build up a foot of soil lasagna style - but I think oaks are touchy about soil over their roots... some trees really need oxygen to get to the roots and if you suddenly change the soil level - like building a house and backfilling a couple of extra inches over the tree roots - you can actually kill a tree. There are rules about how deep, and how much of the circle root zone of the tree can be covered before it becomes a problem. Again, I know the general idea but I don't have the specifics in my scrambled brain dump. Maples... not all maples are created equal. If they are silver maples - no kidding here - I would cut them down now or forget the whole idea. Silver maples and perennials are incompatible. You can get things to grow, but if you want to grow hostas under a silver maple you will either spend an inordinate amount of money and time, or you will see the hostas dwindle as the tree grows. You aren't talking about dropping in a plant or two that you can containerize - you are talking a lot of square footage here. I speak from experience. I watched my silver maple grow from a seedling. Loved the increased shade it was giving my hostas. They loved it too. Abba Dabba Do about 25' from the trunk went to about 66" diameter for a couple of years. Then every year after I watched every hosta in the root region of that tree... I'm talking over a hundred plants now... shrink and shrink and shrink. They suffered from incredible competition for nutrients and water. It wasn't possible to water enough. I dug hostas and found the wirey little maples roots actually grown into and running the length of hosta roots. It was something out of a scifi movie. Digging through the surface roots was a nightmare. The Abba DD dwindled to about 36" before I cut the tree down. Believe me, I wish I'd done it when the tree was smaller - by the time I could bring myself to cut it down, it was 26+" diameter at 6' off the ground where I made my cut (I kept the rest of the trunk as a garden feature. Even getting it dropped before most of the hostas came up in the spring, it did a lot of temporary damage. So... no silver maples or no perennial bed in their root zone. Other maples? Other folks can advise you better... I know people have said all maples tend to have the surface root nets, but I believe some are much less invasive than the devil's spawn silver maple. There's a start......See MoreYardvaark
8 years agoemmarene9
8 years agoNed Reyerson - Zone 6b - Kansas
8 years agoNed Reyerson - Zone 6b - Kansas
8 years agoNed Reyerson - Zone 6b - Kansas
8 years agoNed Reyerson - Zone 6b - Kansas
8 years agoYardvaark
8 years agoNed Reyerson - Zone 6b - Kansas
8 years agoYardvaark
8 years ago
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