Preparing & Installing your Pre-Designed Garden

Getting It Right from the Start
Whether you recently moved into a new home or you've just got the gardening itch, planning a new garden can be a great deal of fun. The opportunity to act as creator can be very appealing. But anyone who has gardened for long has learned the necessity of accommodating nature and has developed a sense of humility in the process.
The hardest thing to convince new gardeners of is the need for patience. With the first warm day of spring they are eager to begin planting and nothing can stop them. Many of these bursts of enthusiasm yield ill-conceived gardens doomed to failure. The plants wither and the would-be gardeners become convinced that they lack some secret knowledge or inherent skill. In most of these cases, however, a few hours of planning and preparation would have made all the difference. It is quite easy to dig up a plot and throw some plants in the ground. It is another thing entirely to create a healthy, living garden.

What Will Grow There?
The first thing to determine is what will grow in the spot available for your garden. This is where many gardeners make their first mistake. Too often plants are purchased before thought has been given to the conditions under which they will have to grow.
The three chief factors determining what will grow in a particular spot are sunlight, the composition of the soil and soil moisture. While you can have some influence on soil composition and moisture, as far as sunlight goes, you're stuck with what you have. It is important to have a good idea of what amount of sunlight will reach your garden throughout the year. Plants that require "full sun" will generally need at least 6 hours of direct sunlight a day. Patches under large deciduous shade trees receive only mottled sunlight. In this situation there can be large variations in the amount of light hitting nearby spots, so generally you will want to find plants that require "half sun," or a few hours of direct sun a day. Other sites, like the north side of a building, are going to remain in shade year-round. The shade garden requires the most careful planning, but there are many wonderful plants that will thrive in the darkest of shade.

The Lay of the Land
Next, you will need to determine what type of soil you'll be working with. The three main constituents of soil are sand, silt and clay. Sand has the largest particles and clay has the smallest, which is why it packs so tightly together. Silt particles are of intermediate size. An ideal garden soil, or loam, would be about 40% sand, 40% silt and 20% clay. The easiest way to see what type of soil you have is to dig a few holes and take some samples. There are a number of simple tests you can do to determine the composition of soil. One method is to take a fistful of soil and squeeze it into a ball. If it is unable to hold its shape, your soil is probably too loose, or sandy. Now try to break the ball apart by pressing on it with your thumb. A good soil will break apart readily; if not, you probably have too much clay in your soil. Another method is to take a couple of cups of soil and put them in a half-gallon jar half filled with water. Agitate the mixture until all the soil is in suspension and then let it settle overnight. The next day you will see that three distinct layers have formed: sand at the bottom, then the silt and at the top a layer of clay.

Amending Your Soil
The best way to amend a poor soil, whether sandy, clay or silty, is to add organic matter. If your soil is high in sand or silt, add a combination of topsoil and peat moss or compost. (Always moisten peat moss before adding it to your soil.) If the problem is too much clay, add peat moss or compost and some sand. Many gardeners advise never adding sand to soil as it can sometimes create a kind of concrete. I have found this to be the case when dealing with urban soils, which can be 80% silt. But when used in addition to organic matter, sand can help loosen clay soils and allow for proper drainage. If your soil is very heavy, i.e., high in clay, you may want to work with a raised bed. This will provide your plants with a little more drainage than they might have otherwise and won't entail replacing several tons of soil. Landscape timber or stones can be used to create a short wall several inches high, or the soil can be gently sloped to prevent erosion.

Keeping a Watch on Moisture
Soil moisture is obviously tied to the climate of the area where you live, but even in a small yard there can be wide variations. If your garden is at the bottom of a hill, the soil may remain wet for long periods of time. In this situation, you can try creating a raised bed as mentioned above, but it is best to stick to plants that enjoy having their feet wet. Alternatively, if your plot is very dry, don't asume you'll be able to compensate by frequent watering. Select plants that will be happy in a dry place and you'll be able to take that two-week vacation without worrying whether your neighbor has remembered to water every day for you.

Don't Fight Mother Nature
While some measures can be taken to make your garden a hospitable place for particular plants, your experience will be much more rewarding if you learn to work with nature. Yes, you may be able to plant your rose garden in that shady spot, but you'll need to feed the roses more fertilizer and spray more fungicide, and they still won't look as nice as if they were planted in full sun. And azaleas in bloom might look great at the front of your south-facing home, but if they were planted beneath some protection from the sun, they might not be constantly infested with lace bugs. Of course, you can spray them regularly with insecticide, but now your garden is becoming about as environmentally friendly as an oil refinery. Learn to work with nature and you will save yourself a lot of time, money and grief.

---

Preparing Flower Beds
This is no one's favorite garden chore, but there's no way around it. Your chosen site will probably have grass on it or at least weeds. These must be cleared somehow, before you can plant anything. Tilling without removing the grass or weeds is best done in the autumn, so that the grass will have a chance to begin decomposing during the winter. Even so, you will probably see new grass and weeds emerging in the spring. It's better to either remove the existing vegetation completely or to smother it.
A sharp flat-edged spade can be used to slice out the sod. If you have poor soil and need to amend it with organic matter or other nutrients, removing the sod may be your best bet, so that you are able to till in the amendments.
Removing sod can be heavy work and you wind up loosing good top soil along with the sod.
If your soil is in relatively good shape, it is possible to leave the grass in place and build on top of it. Place a thick layer (8-10 sheets) of newspaper over the garden bed and wet it thoroughly. Then cover the newspaper with 4-6 inches of good soil. The newspaper will eventually decompose and the turf and weeds will be smothered. There may be some defiant weeds that poke through, but not so many you can hand weed them.
Starting with good soil means you won't have to add a lot of artificial fertilizer to your garden. If you've fed the soil with amendments, the soil will feed your plants.

Planting
Sometimes you have to plant when you have the time, even if that's high noon on a Saturday. But the ideal time to plant is on a still, overcast day. The point is, stress your new plants as little as possible.
Water the plants in their pots the day before you intend to plant.
• Don't remove all the plants from their pots and leave them sitting in the sun for the roots to dry out.
• If the roots are densely packed or growing in a circle, tease them apart, as shown in the photo, so they will stretch out and grow into the surrounding soil.
• Bury the plant to the depth it was in the pot. Too deep and the stem will rot. Too high and the roots will dry out.
• Don't press down hard on the plants as you cover them. Watering will settle them into the ground.
• Water your newly planted garden as soon as it is planted and make sure it gets at least one inch of water per week.
You may have to water more often in hot dry summers. Let your plants tell you how much water they need. Some wilting in noonday sun is normal. Wilting in the evening is stress.

Mulch
You hear a lot about mulching lately, but it really does make a major difference in a garden. Mulch conserves water, blocks weeds and cools the soil. Organic mulches like shredded or chipped bark, compost, straw and shredded leaves, will also improve the soil quality.
Plastic mulches are nice in a vegetable garden to heat the soil around warm season crops like tomatoes, peppers, melons and squash.
Whatever mulch you choose, apply it soon after planting, before new weeds sprout. Apply a 2-4 inch thick layer of mulch, avoiding direct contact with the plant stems. Piling mulch around the stem can lead to rotting and can provide cover for munching mice and voles.

Label your plants and keep garden records
Keep a record of what you have planted or better yet, keep the labels that came with your plants. This will help answer any questions about what the plant may need if it starts looking poorly and will remind you next year of what you liked and what didn't work. It also helps to take pictures and label them. You'll remember color combinations and favorite plants.
If you start a garden journal, you can also record how plants perform, when flowers are in bloom, how large a harvest was and all kinds of information that will help youmake a better garden next year.

Garden maintenance
Hopefully when you were selecting plants you did some background checking and didn't select too many prima donnas. All plants are going to require some maintenance. The idea that perennial plants require less maintenance than annuals is wrong.
At the very least, your plants will require 1 inch of water a week. If it rains regularly, good for you. If not, don't let your plants get drought stressed. Once a plant is stressed it will never recover fully that growing season.
There will also be weeding to do. Weed seeds come from all kinds of sources: wind, birds, soil on shoes...
Deadheading or removing the spent blossoms from your flowers, will keep them blooming longer and looking fresher.
Vegetables will produce more if you keep harvesting while young.
Some taller plants may need to be staked, to keep from flopping.
It may happen that one of your choices isn't happy and dies. Move on and replace it with something else

Step back... and enjoy!
You've heard the saying "Stop and smell the roses"? Gardeners can be the worst at taking that advice. We're so busy with our heads down at soil level, pinching, pruning and pulling every weed, that we often don't appreciate what we've created until someone else tells us.
Step back and enjoy what you've accomplished. Then start making plans to expand next year.