Designing Eden's Landscape Design and Installation Blog
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Designing Eden LLC has been providing landscape design, installation and garden maintenance services in Fairfield and Litchfield County for over 30 years. Richard, the owner, holds degrees in Landscape Architecture and Horticulture. Check out our landscape design tips and information from the only nationally certified landscape designer in Litchfield County!

Fine Garden Maintenance Services
You might be asking what fine garden maintenance services are. Over the years, I’ve heard way too many people say that they renovated their gardens a certain amount of years ago and obviously the company we hired didn’t know what they were doing because our yard is a jungle. That might be true. There are

End of Season Deadheading Equals Free Plants.
As the landscape transitions from summer to fall, it’s a good time to accomplish some tasks including starting to cut back and clean up some perennials. It’s also never too early to start thinking about next season. One of the garden maintenance tasks I like to do is to deadhead self-seeding perennials and spread them

Fall Container Ideas
As summer comes winds down, it will soon be time to start thinking about the fall garden. After the first frost, we will pull out our summer annuals and soon after that, we will start to plant our fall annuals. Some of those plants will be planted in containers so as I start planning for

A Washington, CT Cutting Garden
This is the second season planting this cutting garden in Washington, CT. Last season, when I took over the landscaping of this property, I didn’t have a lot of time to plan this garden or procure mature plants. Subsequently, I planted it with a lot of small plants known for cutting. Season one was mostly

Planting a CT Native Woodland
I have a beautiful woodland behind my house. It’s a couple of acres that runs along the West Aspetuck River in New Milford. We’ve spent a lot of time over the years trying to clean up and improve the space. First, we removed hundreds of fallen Red Pine and brought in a tub grinder to

Our Powered Wheelbarrow for Large Landscapes
Here is our newest tool, I’m calling it our powered wheelbarrow. In a quest to always find more efficient ways to maintain our landscapes, we purchased this small articulating loader to help reduce long walks back to the truck or compost pile. The size of this machine is small enough to drive across lawns all

Good Design and Installation Practices Leads to a Successful Landscape
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

When to Prune Hydrangeas
After 40 years in the landscape industry, I can say there isn’t a plant that creates more confusion than Hydrangeas. We must get 3-4 Hydrangea questions a year. Pruning Hydrangeas and a lack of flowers is often the cause of many of those questions. It’s hard to answer any Hydrangea related questions before knowing what

Portable Water System
Since it was such a dry fall and I think a lot of evergreens, especially broadleaf evergreens, might struggle as we reach spring, I thought I’d write about our portable water system. It has received quite a bit of use the last 4 or more months. We used it throughout the fall, trying to make

Fall Annual Availability
I decided to start documenting the names and colors of all the mums, kales and other fall annuals that are typically available for our clients gardens so they can see what is available for the fall garden vs. me showing up with what I like. Below is a list of the mums and kales that

Controlling Japanese Stilt Grass in the Landscape
I recently attended the Connecticut Invasive Plant Conference at Uconn. In the afternoon, there was a panel discussion about invasive plant control and a question was posed regarding the control of Japanese Stilt Grass in a large wildflower meadow. The person asking the question felt his garden was doomed due to the invasion of Japanese

Articulating loaders for landscaping.
For years, we got away with just a small mini skid steer, the Swiss Army knife of landscaping and a full sized tractor loader backhoe to complete our landscape projects. Although we made it work, it wasn’t optimal. We use the mini skid steer for rototilling/removing turf, moving small trees across clients properties and digging