Sometimes, you move to a home with a neglected garden that is such a mess it is hard to know where to start. Reviving a neglected garden is a lot of work. However, when your efforts succeed, you will have a show piece that increases the value of your home.
Take An Inventory
The first step in reviving a neglected garden is to take an inventory of the plants in the landscape and what condition they are in. If possible, take pictures of each plant or landscape area that you can refer to when making decisions about what to keep and what to remove. If there are gaps in your landscape where something died and was not replaced, mark that down as well. You want to know what is there and what areas are ready to be replanted.
Realistic Timeframe
Trees and shrubs take three to five years to reinvigorate. If you go any faster, you will weaken and possibly kill them. Perennials can usually be cut back to the ground in the fall when they go dormant. They will grow out in the spring. Ornamental grasses can be cut back in early spring, so they grow more vigorously that year.
Budget or time constraints may dictate a slower pace to renovations. When planning what you want to do, design the new look in modules. Do as many or as few modules each year as you have time and money to do. In five or even ten years, you can accomplish everything you planned without blowing your budget or busting your back.
Eliminate Weeds
Now that you have an inventory of plants, start the renovation by eliminating weeds. The weeds steal sunlight, water, and nutrients from the plants you put there. You will have the best success pulling these out by hand. That way, you will not harm the plants adjacent to the weeds.
If you have something very aggressive, like bamboo, cut the stems an inch up from the ground. Paint the cut ends with an herbicide for broadleaf plants. Be careful not to get any herbicide on the plants around the target plant. Repeat as necessary until the plant stops coming back.
Check Irrigation
Transplants need to be watered every day for two weeks, then gradually spread out the watering until you water deeply once a week for the first year for all plants. Water trees and shrubs for the first three years at least once a month. All that water has to come from somewhere. Have an irrigation specialist come out and assess the state of your irrigation system. Do this before proceeding further. You do not want your landscape to die because you cannot water it.
Decide What To Remove
Take your plant inventory and decide what has to go. Maybe it is too large for its landscape area, it isn’t doing well, or you just hate it. Decide what you want to keep. Some keepers will need corrective pruning or other work but will be satisfactory and have a place in your garden at the end of the process. Finally, and this will probably be the biggest category, decide what you are not sure about. These plants are ones you will try to reinvigorate before you decide to keep or remove them.
Prioritize Work
You need to decide what order to work on your renovation. For some people, it makes sense to start in one flower bed. Remove what definitely goes and work to make what stays, even if it is just for right now, grow with renewed vigor before moving on to the next area. For other people, they want to remove everything that goes before working on the plants that stay or putting in replacements in the holes in the landscape.
Renovations generally go smoother if you fix the existing landscape features before adding new flower beds or large trees. You may find an area that is problematic and needs to be treated before being replanted. If you plant first, you may lose the new plants and waste your money.
Choosing New Plants
Before choosing new plants, make a careful note of the characteristics of the spot you want to plant them. Answer these questions first:
- How much sun does the area receive?
- How much water does it get?
- Does water stand after a rain?
- What kind of soil does the area have?
- How much room does the spot have?
Match a new plant to each spot based on the answers to these questions. Do not put a plant that will have to be pruned to fit in that spot. Pick one that will be the correct size without major pruning. For example, crape myrtles come in a range of sizes from about two feet high to thirty or forty feet tall. Make sure you get the right variety for the size of the spot. The Sioux Pink Crepe Myrtle grows to be ten to fifteen feet tall. Don’t plant it somewhere that it is too big for and then top it every year (called crape murder by professionals). Get one of the dwarf varieties instead.
Native plants come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Perennials such as the red cardinal plant or purple coneflower come back year after year. These plants are low maintenance once they are established. Native plants are adapted to the rainfall of the area, resist pests and diseases found there, and need very little fertilizer or water each year. TN Nursery specializes in matching native plants to every area of your landscape. We will be happy to help you find what you need.
Mulch
Mulch helps suppress weeds, conserves soil moisture, and looks better than bare ground. Use three inches of it around your plants. Do not let the mulch actually touch stems or trunks or it will cause rot. Leave an inch gap for stems and three inches for trunks.
Pruning To Reinvigorate
If you are trying to reinvigorate or tame wildly overgrown deciduous trees and shrubs, know that it is a three-to-five-year process. Never cut more than one third of the tree or shrub a year or you risk permanent injury or death. You will probably have to hire an arborist to prune these trees because of size and the danger of climbing a large tree to trim the top part. The arborist will be able to make a plan for the next three to five years to reduce the size of the tree and get it under control again.
Evergreen trees and shrubs such as American arborvitae are hard to reinvigorate after they have gotten too large. They do not have needles or leaves in the interior of their branches. Everything grows from the tip. If you cut them back, you will have bare branches permanently. Evergreen trees may have to be cut down and replaced if they are too big. Think hard before taking this step because these trees are valuable.
Reinvigorating your landscape is a way to change a messy, weedy landscape that detracts from curb appeal into a show piece worth thousands more than before. As always, we are here to help.