Plant selection
Posted on August 5th, 2008 – 8:07 AMBy Jason Hammond
Our Plants arrive.
The Swedish Columnar Aspen goes into place at the corner of the house. The tree will eventually fill out to about 8 ft in diameter.
The front rain gardens get their first row of native plants—Little Bluestem. Down the middle a tall white spikey native called Culver’s Root will sit. Both of these plant do well with lots of water which is perfect for the rain gardens.
Both natives and non-natives fill the bed off the side of the patio. The non-native in the center area is a grass called Karl Foerster Feather Reed Grass and is common in organic designs. It’s perfect for us because it’s height (3′ to 5′ at full growth) and feathery texture softens the visual lines of the concrete pillar. The plant on the outside is a native called Blazing Star.
Our landscape plan has had almost as much thought put into it as our entire house. Although the initial conceptual design played out rather quickly, the fine details of which plants we would select has been a rather drawn out one.
Our landscape Designer (Dustin Halverson) had planned for a tree to be placed close to the front windows of the house on the southwest corner. Although the tree was designed to provide some shade to the larger windows on this side of our house, its main purpose from a design perspective was to provide a sense of scale. For this reason, we opted for a Swedish Columnar Aspen. Its tall column like shape, gives the complementary height we need to tie the landscaping and the house together, without impeding on the actual structure itself. After mulling over a half dozen tree options this would prove to be one one of our easier design decisions.
There is so much to take in when selecting plants for your landscaping, grasses vs. flowers, native vs. cultivars/non-natives, size and shape, bloom time, soil type, and even color all come into play. Adding to the mix, we have committed to making our landscape be a functional piece of our homes “green friendly” design, and have received a grant from the Ramsey Washington Metro Watershed District to do so. This means, that native plants will need to be a large portion of our plantings in order to meet our obligation with the RWMWD.
Stacy and I both wanted plants that would work well with the lines of our house by having some similar sense of control and geometry. At the same time we knew (and Dustin reinforced the fact) that we would need to utilize these plantings to soften some of the lines and allow us to merge our home in with the surround landscape. For this reason, we have picked a mixture of natives, cultivars/non-natives. In some cases we have segregated the natives to specific areas like the rain gardens. While in other cases we’ve mixed the two, for either a sense of texture or or to create some variation in height or color.
After some negotiation we had settled on an initial planting plan, but the day before the plants were to arrive we started second guessing some of our choices. We both were hoping to have some nice bright oranges or reds out front but for the most part these are cultivars and we wanted to keep the rain gardens filled with natives. Our second choice in this case was some geometric looking bulb like plants called Allium (members of the onion family) but the ones we had seen and liked (in white) proved to be a cultivars as well. Although we had found a great resource for selecting native plants (bluethumb.org) having not seen many of the plants in person we were still feeling a bit uneasy. We decided to make a trip out to the Watershed district building, to look at their collection of plants, and see first hand what they might look like. This proved to be a huge help. Our contact at the watershed (Julie) proved to be incredibly helpful, not only showing us the plants we were interested in, but showing us many of them in various stages of growth. We also discovered several new plants like Culvers Root which we decided to integrate into our design. Ultimately, our trip to the watershed building validated many of the plant selections that Dustin had suggested, but also proved to be invaluable in helping us find some new options. We were also able to see how our rather small plants will blossom and grow into more substantial and prominent elements of our design over time, and see how the various combinations of plants will work together. I’d highly recommend you make a field trip of like this of your own if you’re going to make a substantial investments in your landscaping.
5 Responses to "Plant selection"
Jason,
How much of the driveway actually drains to the rain gardens. It is somewhat hard to tell from the pictures, but it looks fairly minimal.
David,
It actually has the same pitch running down as it does to the side.You, an’t really tell in the photo very well as it gets flattened out. However, you can see the effect when you run water down it. Water definitely goes towards the street (which is why we have the circles in the driveway)but it also moves towards the rain gardens. Before we put plants in we had some heavy rains and the holes for the rain gardens really filled up quickly as a result of this.
Jason
The landscaping part is so fun!!! And you can continue to tinker with it over the years as you find new plants and discover what works/doesn’t and what you like/don’t. Very exciting. Love the tree. I’ve never seen that. Must not grow here in the deep south maybe.
What Pamela wrote matches our experience. Our garden has changed so much since we first planned and planted it. Many flowers, shrubs and trees grew taller and faster than we expected. Others didn’t do well and had to be replaced. Many of the nicest flowers were destroyed by slugs, so we had to plant others they don’t like. Originally I only wanted white, blue and yellow blossoms, a concept I couldn’t stick to over the years.
Our garden is constantly changing, except for its tall elements.
Btw: do you have a compost or a place where you could install one? We have several compost boxes. Everything that grows in our garden, stays in it. Leaves are being raked onto the flower beds in late fall, to protect the roots during the winter. In late winter, they (or what’s left of them) are being carried unter our tall shrubs, further nurturing them. We use nothing else than compost to fertilize our flower beds. I think that’s also a very green aspect.
Our lawn doesn’t get fertilized at all and therefore is 60% weed. Mowed once a week, it looks good nevertheless. I admit that won’t work in your garden, but people here are not as “lawn crazy” as in the U.S. 
Hi Connie,
I’m excited to see how the plants will grow and develop over the next few years. We also plan to do some more plantings this coming fall to cover the area next to the pond (that is currently covered in turf) with native grasses and plants. I think it will give us a chance to introduce a greater variety of plants into our landscape as well.
A big green lawn certainly has become something of great desire in the U.S. I’ve been looking at some organic solutions that can be used to help keep the nice appearance of our lawn up without the addition of chemicals to it. I don’t want to add anything to the water system or on my kids bodies just so my lawn looks green.
Jason
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