Make the job of shearing easier, if you wish, by using a power hedge trimmer, preferably a cordless hedge trimmer so that you don’t have to drag around an electrical cord. While trimming your hedges, inspect between the individual plants to check for weeds. For a hedge to look its best and grow optimally, it must be kept weed-free. Even more critically, be sure not to let any young saplings become established in your hedgerow. For example, maple tree samaras might blow into your hedge, fall through to the ground, germinate, and take root. Before you know it, maple trees are growing through the hedge, marring its appearance. Once they gain a toehold, they can be hard to remove; you might damage hedge roots in the process of pulling out the unwanted trees. This invasive vine can cause a lot of harm, strangling tree trunks and casting excessive shade in their canopies; be sure to check for its presence when you walk your property so that you can kill Oriental bittersweet before it becomes established. Humans, too, can cause tree girdling. A common mistake is leaving the label on a tree for too long. The label’s string will eventually dig deeply into the branch it has been tied to, choking off the flow of nutrients. Shrubs and trees arranged symmetrically will have to be kept pruned so that the pairs remain matched. It’s not uncommon to find examples of shrubs growing on either side of a house entrance where the homeowner’s intention was obviously to achieve symmetry. Unfortunately, one shrub in the pair was allowed to get bigger than the other, thus foiling the homeowner’s plan. It’s always a good practice to purchase the best quality, unique garden ornaments you can afford to create well-thought-out focal points. A general rule of thumb is to avoid scattering inexpensive plastic garden ornaments throughout your grounds because they distract from your overall landscape design. If your answer is “for myself,” that effectively ends the discussion, because what constitutes a garden ornament is ultimately subjective. But if you’re landscaping for real estate value or to impress the neighbors or your in-laws, you’ll have to take into account how others feel about your choice of decoration. Consider tire planters, for example; some of you might love them, as they certainly say “country”―which is not at all a bad thing―but they do not say “upscale country.” If you live in suburbia and care about the impression you’re creating, carve out a spot in the backyard for your tire planter. It doesn’t belong in your front-yard design, whether it be located at the entrance of your driveway or as part of your mailbox planting. And if you’re trying to sell your home, we don’t recommend using tire planters in the front yard or back yard. If only it was that simple. Lawncare experts will quickly and vehemently set you straight in this matter, pointing out that lawn mowing is not just about keeping up appearances: it’s about grass health, too. Cutting grass too short, is a big no-no. Lawncare experts have defined how high to cut grass to reduce weed seed germination and conserve soil moisture. Also, be sure to keep your mower blade sharp, because dull mower blades create a ragged cut instead of slicing through grass blades cleanly. Ragged cuts cause brown tips on grass blades and provide an entry point for disease. If, while you’re mulling over your fence choices, and you need to erect some kind of fencing along your property line in the meantime, consider a solution in which your fence sections are interspersed with shrubs. In the photo, the homeowners have installed inexpensive fence panels with shrubs planted between the individual panels. At a later date, they can remove the temporary panels and shrubs and erect a more permanent fencing solution. If you realize that you made bad decisions about plant selection, you have a few options:
Live with the bad situation Trim the plant Transplant it to another location
To learn more about a wide variety of plants, look through our A-Z database of plants by scientific name to find plants whose mature size perfectly fits your landscape.
