In landscaping, size matters. I understand the current economic hardships with inflation, working with my own clients. Keeping costs low is a given with all projects, commercial and residential. But when renovating your landscape, clever design and phasing can help alleviate paying a lot of money upfront while still achieving a new and beautiful look for a new year.

My heart went out to the unknown manager(s) who wanted to update their landscape, but didn’t know how to achieve a clean, low-maintenance, property. In this case, the landscape has lots of oak trees throughout. While providing the benefit of shade, tree roots don’t work well with plants. The trees’ roots don’t allow space to grow plants. The roots also will not work with the plastic edging, pushing the plastic up and out as the roots grow. To save future costs, expensive rock mulch was installed.

The current perspective of the landscape conjures up visions of golf course sand traps, but with rocks. The lack of plants in these landscape beds means that over time weeds will be popping up through the rocks and will need expensive chemicals and more maintenance.

A better and less costly approach would have been to have a phased installation over time (as needed) to create larger beds, or even just one long bed in the center of the property frontage. No edging is needed unless you want to install a cement curb. Using a cheaper organic mulch, and spending more money on plants, such as succulents, bromeliads, and groundcovers for shade, like Asiatic jasmine, would look nice. The Asiatic jasmine can be trimmed easier than the hard-to-grow turfgrass and can expand to cover (over two to three years) the entire frontage. Groupings of saw palmettos, cycads, sagos, and even caladiums and African irises, could be alternative species that would be attractive, provide wildlife resources, conserve water, with labor once or twice a year. No more need for fertilizers, lower use of supplemental water, or chemicals.

While bromeliads and larger succulents cost more, they multiple very easily, and planting them on the outside of the circular beds would look much nicer. For these sized beds, I would have placed 10 to 15 plants in each bed.

The protruding gutters look like a battleship with cannons sticking into the beds. Burying or running the gutters along the foundation and then going out to the side would look much better and deliver the rain to the landscape where it’s needed much more than around the foundation or evaporate from the pavement.

I sometimes look for opportunities to stop and help properties when I see landscape malpractice. Unfortunately, I don’t think my efforts would be listened to or welcomed. Landscapes don’t have to be built in one day. Taking the time to create a landscape that enhances the property while providing for wildlife, with lower maintenance should be a goal. Remember not only does size matter, quantities, and quality count, too!