How to Get Started With Your Natural Landscape Gardens
by John Yazo
The most obvious place you would think to start turning your lawn or gardens into a natural landscape is in the areas where grass isn't growing or do well, places like shaded areas, wet areas, steep slopes that are hard to work and rock outcroppings. These are are all good places for some type of alternative plantings, but you still to do some more research before you can develop a plan that will work for you, you can't just start planting.
Once you have some areas in mind, put a list of plants that you would like to see grown in those areas,research them and make sure they are appropriate for your area, and most important is to start out with small sections of those areas, don"t try to do everything at once. Expanding your gardens as they grow and you can see the end product is a lot less work and less expensive than finding out nothing is working the way you thought.
When choosing plants for you natural landscape, select from limited number of plant varieties and incorporate groundcover plants into your design. Layout what you are trying to accomplish and don't be afraid to plant in small bunches or clusters, this is know as "drifts".If you look at the way nature grows plants in the wild, they are not uniform, you want that natural look.
When designing your gardens, incorporate the existing walkways, pavement, shrubs and trees that exist in your yard as a part of your new gardens. Existing trees and shrubs can simply be landscaped around with some simple groundcover.
The adding of a natural look to a formal yard that has lot of open space because of plants that have been strategically placed can be accomplished easily by creating areas of flowering perennials, grouped together and adding some ornamental grasses into your design. This look can even be accomplished when trees have been grown in a line along a property line by grouping plants together in a free flowing, wavy or uneven appearance along the property line. This even works well in front of a fence.
Your imagination is the limit when it come to a natural landscape. Whatever you choose to create, don't remove existing native plants from the wild and transplant them as a part of your landscape. Some of the plants you take may be ones that are endangered. When moved they may not survive and causing them to become one more step closer to extinction, along with harming the existing ecosystem they came from.
There is so much you can do when creating a natural landscape garden and the attraction of wildlife like birds and butterflies is just a couple of enjoyable sites to see.
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