Garden Coaching

If you are on the right mailing lists, seed catalogs have probably already started showing up in your mailbox, soon to be followed by flower, edible plant, bulb, ornamental plant and/or garden supply catalogs. If you join in the annual ritual of pouring over these catalogs, marking things that look like they would be great additions to your yard but are unsure just what you would actually do with everything if you were to order and have them show up on your doorstep, then hiring a garden coach might be just the thing for you.

Hire a garden coach? Just what is a garden coach, you ask?

I was quoted in an article on garden coaching in the March 2010 Costco Magazine, "A garden coach is like hiring a professional trainer for your garden", explains Costco member Cathy Stein, owner of Eclectic Design Choices and a coach in Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas. "The role of a garden coach is to show a homeowner how to make improvements and maintain their landscape, to access the needs of their landscape and to show them how to put it into top shape".

Garden coaches offer a variety of services to help you turn your landscape visions into reality. They may help you with design, plant selection, shopping for healthy plants, plant care instruction, plant identification and lists of professionals for the parts of your yard transformation that you don't want to tackle yourself. By doing all of these things, a garden coach can actually help save you money by avoiding costly mistakes. For more of my thoughts on what a garden coach can do for you, click on my garden coaching tab above.

If you live in another part of the U.S. and would like to find a garden coach near you, you can find listings for garden coaches in your state in this garden coach directory. There are even international listings there as well. If you live in the DFW area, I'd love to talk with you about setting up an initial consultation.

Feed the Birds

Watching wildlife in your yard is an enjoyable pastime. Two of the best ways to attract wildlife to your yard are to provide food and water. This can be achieved through plant selection and well placed feeders and water sources. With their high degree of mobility, birds are an easy critter to attract to your landscape and the variety of sizes and colors are a joy to behold.

While you can purchase and maintain hummingbird feeders, you can also plant small trumpet shaped flowers to attract these tiny aerial acrobats to your yard. These plants will also provide color for you to enjoy. Three of my favorite hummingbird attractors are autumn sage, agastache, and anisacanthus (hummingbird bush). For a bright spot of fall color, before the birds discover it, American beautyberry is a good choice. Several species of birds enjoy these bright magenta berries.

There are many hardscape ways to provide food and water. Water sources can include bird baths, ponds, and fountains. There are many good bird feeders available in the marketplace. If you would like to provide both at once, a “teacup” bird feeder might be a good choice for you. These small combo feeders and bird baths are great for an intimate setting just outside a window. Hang them from a limb or a garden shepherd’s hook so that it is visible from a window. You will also want to place it so that it is easy to refill and clean.

Add a little wildlife magic to your landscape with these suggestions. The combo feeder and bird bath pictured is available from EDCCollective. The name of one of its recycled components is the “Magic Garden series”. It is suspended from brass components for years of rust free use.

Designing for Easier Landscape Maintenance

Inside corners are no fun to mow. I used to have one that was bounded by the driveway to the east and a fence surrounding a utility area to the south. With a car usually parked along the edge of the driveway, mowing involved a lot of back and forth, tight turns and paying attention to which way the wind was blowing so the car didn’t get covered with cut grass.

In these situations, I like to use a landscape bed to round out the inside corner. However, this area was also a well trafficked area just outside the garage walk door. I didn’t need to install a landscape bed and have a path beaten through my plantings.

One handy trick for areas that you are having trouble visualizing a solution for, is to lay out a garden hose to help define the space. I laid one out with gentle curves and adjusted it until I could drive my riding mower along it without having to stop and back up. I also delineated a path through the proposed bed. My family evaluated this layout for a couple of weeks to make sure that we had a design that met our needs. (It is much easier to adjust a garden hose than a flagstone path.)

Once we were comfortable with the layout, we rented a sod cutter for removing the grass. Then we installed edgestone pavers along the border of the bed. (These are great for making curves.) I like to install a flat solid edging between the lawn and the edgestones. I find that this makes it easier to maintain a clean edge and keep the grass out of your bed. I used black plastic edging with a large bead at the top for the sides of the path. The path was constructed with flagstone that was “grouted” with decomposed granite. After this we installed the plants and mulch.

This area is now much easier to maintain. Added benefits include the reduction of thirsty lawn grass and more camouflage to pretty up my utility area.