Opening Up Our Landscapes
Vacationing at home has taken on an added emphasis in this time of the COVID-19 pandemic. Home is, for most of us, the safest place to be, the place we have the most control over. Our gardens offer a significant extension of the interior home environment, especially during the months when the climate is so inviting to be outside. Being outside gives us the most air space to enjoy activities safely. As mentioned in past months in this column, the more inviting and varied areas and activities we can create at home will offer us options to feel less constricted or confined.
Opening up our landscapes gives us flexibility and options. Remove extraneous barriers, walls, hedges, fences, steps, and the like. Create flow around the property, casual paths, destinations, relaxations places, and play spots. For those will larger properties, there’s nothing like an excellent trail system to allow you and your guests to explore and enjoy nature, catch a view, or find calm in a quiet place. Trails are inexpensive to build and only need minimal cleaning up once or twice in the growing season to keep open and safe.
If your yard is mostly a place to find calm, meditate, or relax, why not
enhance those experiences. Maybe you are missing camping? Turn some of your space into an improvised campsite with tents, hammocks, picnic tables, etc. Your house might be 30’ away, but you’ve created another world. Water is another big part of summer, and if you are lucky enough to have a pool, that’s a huge plus. But there are less expensive alternatives too. Simply finding an open space an put out a hose-end sprinkler is fun to run under, and children love them. Have some comfortable lounge chairs nearby to relax.
Summer is an excellent time for gardening as well. Use the cooler morning or evening to do the more demanding physical chores, but many tidy-up needs, minor pruning, dead-heading, and picking fruits and vegetables can be done whenever you have time. A little dead-heading and early replanting can guarantee more flowers and veggies into the fall when we’ll still want to be outdoors. I find that since most of the rapid growth on fruit trees will be over, summer pruning can save lots of winter pruning, and promote dense growth.
Most fruits and vegetables tend to over-produce at their peak, so processing these can be a satisfying activity. Or you can offer them to friends and neighbors, or free food distribution centers. Every month is a good month to analyze your landscape, but it is an especially good time to check your irrigation systems. Are some plants looking too stressed or unexplained damp spots appearing elsewhere? Correct these instead of wasting water. Maybe you planted out some drought-tolerant natives that are well established and don’t need to be on irrigation any longer, time to take it off.
Fire season has been here for a couple of months, but the risk only gets more significant as we head into fall – everything is drier, and wind storms become more frequent. Carefully analyze the vegetation you have surrounding your home. Eliminate anything that isn’t providing you a benefit. On larger properties, close mowing of grasses and herbaceous growth can help create significant fire-breaks. Professional landscape designers and contractors are here to help as well. Planet Horticulture specializes in unique plantscapes and trail systems. Happy gardening!
