audreyh1
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Well - it's only one project, but it has been a big one. And I'm starting to feel like a professional landscape designer.
I have spent well over two months in intense research and design which has culminated in the landscape design for our new house. All the trees and flowerbeds were planted and mulched last week. And the grass (with underground watering) will go in early next week.
The attached file below (click for large, readable view) is the design overview and has the trees individually labeled - some are in garden beds, some in the lawn. The colored dots represent flowering shrubs of various species, and the dotted circles are how wide the plant will probably get. That is how I was able to place the plant in each. I used Adobe InDesign (a page layout program) to draw the design and the the grid is a 3 foot scale.
This is ultimately a butterfly and bird garden. All the plants are either butterfly host plants (where they lay eggs and the resulting caterpillars feed), butterfly nectar plants, or bird and hummingbird food/nectar plants. The emphasis is on plants native to the area. Most of the trees are completely foreign to the rest of the US. Acacias dominate the larger shrubs and trees as is typical around here.
We have visited the area for many years, so I was already intimately familiar with the local plants. And the development already emphasizes on these types of plants which is one of the reasons we decided to build a home here. It still took a lot of work to make the final plant selection. Lots of local resources are available - particularly documents from the local international butterfly garden that identify butterfly host and nectar plants.
The actual work was done by the development landscaping crew and they followed my design documents. But I was out there with them helping measure beds, place plants, interpret my design and make adjustments, etc. This is the most extensive garden they've put in at any house, although there are common areas that are just as fancy. I really wanted to take advantage of the north back wall as a backdrop for a wide bed of large plants. Ultimately it should have a bit of a jungle look as a background to the lower flowering plants.
I am most proud of my two large Texas Ebony trees. I paid extra for larger trees, and I got quite a deal as the trees were even twice as large what we ordered. The Texas Ebony is a pretty special tree native to this area. It's a large dark dense evergreen acacia that makes cool dark brown bean pods. Groves of naturally occurring ebonies are increasingly rare around here, so it's neat having a couple of them in my back yard.
Audrey
(P.S. So what do you do all day?)
I have spent well over two months in intense research and design which has culminated in the landscape design for our new house. All the trees and flowerbeds were planted and mulched last week. And the grass (with underground watering) will go in early next week.
The attached file below (click for large, readable view) is the design overview and has the trees individually labeled - some are in garden beds, some in the lawn. The colored dots represent flowering shrubs of various species, and the dotted circles are how wide the plant will probably get. That is how I was able to place the plant in each. I used Adobe InDesign (a page layout program) to draw the design and the the grid is a 3 foot scale.
This is ultimately a butterfly and bird garden. All the plants are either butterfly host plants (where they lay eggs and the resulting caterpillars feed), butterfly nectar plants, or bird and hummingbird food/nectar plants. The emphasis is on plants native to the area. Most of the trees are completely foreign to the rest of the US. Acacias dominate the larger shrubs and trees as is typical around here.
We have visited the area for many years, so I was already intimately familiar with the local plants. And the development already emphasizes on these types of plants which is one of the reasons we decided to build a home here. It still took a lot of work to make the final plant selection. Lots of local resources are available - particularly documents from the local international butterfly garden that identify butterfly host and nectar plants.
The actual work was done by the development landscaping crew and they followed my design documents. But I was out there with them helping measure beds, place plants, interpret my design and make adjustments, etc. This is the most extensive garden they've put in at any house, although there are common areas that are just as fancy. I really wanted to take advantage of the north back wall as a backdrop for a wide bed of large plants. Ultimately it should have a bit of a jungle look as a background to the lower flowering plants.
I am most proud of my two large Texas Ebony trees. I paid extra for larger trees, and I got quite a deal as the trees were even twice as large what we ordered. The Texas Ebony is a pretty special tree native to this area. It's a large dark dense evergreen acacia that makes cool dark brown bean pods. Groves of naturally occurring ebonies are increasingly rare around here, so it's neat having a couple of them in my back yard.
Audrey
(P.S. So what do you do all day?)
