For years, we’ve offered garden maintenance services as a way to help ensure our new landscape installations establish successfully. A long career has taught me that the only gardens that aren’t successful have been the ones where people ignore maintenance altogether, people try to save money by hiring someone who don’t know what they’re doing or people try to do it themselves and then don’t commit the time. Not that what we do is rocket science but it does require some knowledge and a lot of consistency. For the life of me, I don’t understand why someone would spend a ton of money on landscape design and installation services and then make a conscious decision not to maintain that investment. This thought process has always been a head scratcher to me. Not maintaining a new landscape is equivalent to buying a new car and never changing the oil or air filter.
For years, we would only maintain our own gardens. I was never interested in maintaining landscapes we didn’t install until recently. The reason for this is there are a lot of bad landscape designers and a lot of bad landscapers out there. I mean, it’s relatively easy to hire a landscape designer or landscape architect. It’s even easier to find a landscaper willing to install a landscape. That doesn’t mean they are good at what they do. Case in point is this property. We didn’t design this property and we didn’t install this landscape but we are occasionally asked to maintain this garden every year. Working on this beautiful property is frustrating as a landscape designer and the owner of a landscape company. First, I’ll start with the landscape design. There are some questionable plant choices. For instance, Green Giant Arborvitaes used as a hedge isn’t a bad choice but planting them 18″ from a fence is just crazy. For a plant that wants to mature to 15′ wide at its base, trying to manage a Green Giant 18″ from its trunk is a tall ask. If Green Giants were the chosen plant, they should have been planted much further away from the fence. If the plant had to be placed 18″ from a fence, a substitution should have been made.
I believe the problem is 99% of landscape designers have never had to maintain their own creations for years, never mind for decades. This Arborvitae hedge will always be a maintenance nightmare caused by a poor plant choice by the landscape designer. As for the landscape installation, every tree on this property is planted too deep. Some trees are close, being planted an inch or two low. The soil around some of these trees has been removed 6″ below the surrounded grade and I still don’t see the root flare. Most trees are planted so deep, I wouldn’t be able to find the root flare without disturbing a majority of the surrounding area. Also, all the wire baskets were left on the trees. Eventually, trees roots will grow through the wire basket, expand in girth and will create a situation of self strangulation. When this happens, it will cut off the plants ability to uptake water and nutrients. Also, when you plant a tree well below the root flare, inconsequential roots start to develop above the root flare. If these are not removed, they will become a problem down the road. These tree’s will certainly struggle throughout their life due to poor planting practices and undoubtedly will shorten the life of every tree.
I consider myself a pretty good landscape designer. It’s not because of my time spent getting degrees in Horticulture and Landscape Architecture although that was a good base. I’ve become such a better designer because I have maintained the gardens that we’ve designed and installed. Some gardens we only maintain for a couple years but we have gardens that we still maintain today that we designed and installed in the 90’s. That’s an education in landscape design and through our garden maintenance services, I’ve become a better designer.
