Maybe you recently purchased a new home with existing
plants, or you’ve finally decided to tackle that project of making your yard
less of an eyesore. Those plants were
there before you were, and you really have no idea what they are or where to
start? Or, maybe you even planted some of them at some point, and you thought
you would remember what they were, but life got busy and you had several other
things to remember. Suddenly the name of
the perennial Aunt Martha gave you 10 years ago as a housewarming gift is not
one of the things you recall.
If it’s the first year in your home or just the first year
you are actively paying attention, the best thing to do is to slowdown and start
a journal of plant notes. That may sound
like a tedious project in itself, and in your mind taking out every plant and
starting fresh sounds less like a root canal than a journal of plant
notes. Here's a video about garden journaling. However, ripping out your entire
landscape is equivalent to burning down your house because it hasn’t been cleaned
in a long time, and it’s a lot more work than you might anticipate. It’s likely that project will also wind up
partially completed, and you’ll have an overgrown bed adjacent to a bare naked
bed. If you do actually pull everything out,
you’ll forget you haven’t decided what you’re replacing it with, and each trip
to the nursery to pick out plants will remind you how expensive those
replacements are which could mean completion takes longer than you expected
anyway.
For the first year, you’ll want to keep a plant journal of
each season. Keeping a gardening journal
doesn’t mean you are at a standstill or you aren’t making progress toward the
yard of your dreams. Don’t worry about
not doing enough, because you can always clear leaves and anything you are
positive is a weed, and that will keep you busy year round.
The plant journal is a great place to record what you have
now and also to brainstorm what you might like in its place or in
addition. Otherwise, you’re likely to
plant on top of something that is already growing there and just hasn’t shown
itself yet. It may be a good time to
pull out the plat map of the property that came with your title report when you
purchased your home because it can be provide a good map of the property. Or you can make your own map of the area in
your journal.
Take photos of the garden at different times of the day as
well as different seasons, and keep them in your journal. You may want to label each photo with the
type of plant or care that is necessary to keep it healthy, but to start at
least keep photos with your garden notes so you can remember the changes. You’ll also begin to notice some areas of the
garden that don’t fill in and need to have something planted there. Or, you may discover taller perennials
located at the front of the bed, when they should be in the back so they don’t
cover up everything behind it.
You’ll also want to start identifying what you already have
to keep a master plant list, and see how that plant is doing in its current
location. It may be that when it blooms
you decide you love it and won’t want to remove it after all, but you realize
it’s overgrown or just not quite resembling the photos of what you think it
could look like. It may mean you
relocate the plant to another area of the yard where it does better, or maybe
it needs divided or trimmed. You can use
perennial finders online to help identify plants, or download the
app for tree identification leafsnap to figure out what trees are in your
yard. Of course, for one-on-one
assistance, your local University of Idaho Extension Office. can help you identify plants and trees
and provide tips to caring for them also.
After you’ve survived 4 seasons, you’ll start to have an
idea of what you like and dislike about your existing plants. You’ll be able to decide which ones you dislike
or what you might change about the location.
Plus, you’ll have seen so many plants at this point in your plant
identification search that you’ll start to have your own ideas about what you would
like. You may have already written down
possibilities and then selected a plant that will do well in that location as
well as what you find attractive. In the
end, your garden is ever evolving and changing, but a little planning will make
the actual planting a lot less painful. For even more how-to information, check out this article.