Enhance your landscape design with landscaping
Homeowners often lose interest in their landscaping over time. Doing “yard work” takes a second place, as the fast pace of modern life takes over our time and attention. At best, some homeowners resort to what we call “landscaping”—doing only the basic tasks necessary to keep the green space growing.
Regular landscape maintenance is important because it keeps your yard in top shape, season after season and year after year. Like any other art form, landscape design is about the attention we give it and the tools we use to develop it. Landscaping is a balance between what nature provides and what you would like to achieve in your landscape.
Let’s list five fundamental elements in the ecosystem of any landscape design:
- Soil is where all the nutrients and water are found and processed so that plants can use these resources for their growth.
- Climate – a climatic zone of plant resistance that helps gardeners determine which plants can survive during different seasons.
- Exposure takes into account how much sun and shade affect our plants and what we need to do to protect them.
- Water, without which life itself cannot exist. How much and how often your plants need water is largely determined by the four elements of the ecological system described above.
- Plants to know and study so you can better choose the “right plants for the right places” in your ecosystem.
It’s only fitting that we end the list with the item most people think comes first. Surprisingly, it’s a mistake to choose plants at first because what will be successful or not will be determined by other elements of your ecosystem. Instead, it is vital to first prepare the ecosystem and then plant the plants.
Once you understand the ecosystem of your garden or backyard, you can look at plants from an ecological perspective and ask the right questions, such as “do they belong in this system and will the environment support them?”. If the answer is yes, then you will know how to maintain an ecological system so that plants and the environment work together.