Working with Contractors

A friend recently showed me an area that she wanted to landscape, and asked about a designer. I was able to recommend another friend (an accomplished designer) but the project motivated me to review the “design & install” category of landscaping projects.

The basics of landscape design often are described by a few broad guidelines:

First, consider how you will use the landscaped area. Too many spaces are created for certain purposes and then little used because the homeowner doesn’t really enjoy outdoor entertaining, the kids have grown and flown, the design requires too much maintenance, etc.

Then, learn all you can about the area to be developed. Make at least a rough scale drawing of the area. Mark important plants or other features that are to be retained. Indicate significant microclimates, e.g., deep shade, windy areas, water-retaining swales. Diagram that seasonal path of the sun. Have the soil tested.

Bring in a designer, unless you are confident in your own ideas and plant selections. These days, it’s good to find someone who understands and practices soil regeneration, integrated pest management, and organic practices in general. The Green Gardener program lists landscapers with up-to-date training. Contractors with long years of experience might be skilled in—and committed to—outdated methods.

Begin the install process with any required grading and the hardscape elements, e.g., paths, retaining walls, ponds, garden structures.

Missy Henriksen, of the National Association of Landscape Professionals, recently recommended ways to have an effective partnership between client and contractor. (If you visit the NALP website, click on the “Consumers” tab for ideas for homeowners.)

Here are Missy Henriksen’s tips, with my running commentary.

Communicate your long-term vision for your lawn. Well, lawns are on their way out, because to look really good they need a lot of mowing and edging, and synthetic chemicals. Otherwise, the advice is to be clear about longer-term visions, so that the contractor can provide a phased plan.

Understand the importance of working with native flowers, shrubs, and trees. Plants that are native to your specific area will thrive in your garden, while exotic imports will require extraordinary efforts to keep them alive and growing, and might still struggle.

Consider what time investment you want to make in your landscape after the installation is done. The late gardener and garden writer, Christopher Lloyd, favored high-maintenance gardening, which could entail changing plants frequently to provide year-round color. That practice has made his garden, Great Dixter, famous, but it’s not every gardener’s priority.

Allow adequate time for your landscape project. Certainly, the client should accept the reality that everything takes longer than expected, but it’s also reasonable to expect your contractor to make steady progress on your project, and not compromise that progress to work on someone else’s priority.

Know your budget. Address financial constraints by a phased approach to your longer-term objectives. A little self-discipline can be frustrating but better eventually than wishful thinking. On the other hand, the best results can result from thinking big.

Communicate any special community rules. A good landscaper should know, or found out about, restrictions by local government, or a homeowner’s association. Your standard should be “No surprises!”

Ask any lingering questions. A good practice is to require a written contract that covers all significant issues. For larger landscaping projects, refer to “A Consumer Guide to Home Improvement Contracts” and “Choosing the Right Landscaper,” both publications of the California’s Contractors State License Board. Accept the contracted work only after satisfaction of applicable standards of the landscaping industry, rather than approval by the local government or a homeowner’s association.

A successful landscaping project can give the garden owner long-term satisfaction and yield a substantial boost to the value of the property.

Survey of Garden Customers

Your local garden center has a continuing interest in what its customers seek and will seek in the future. That information has much to do with the success of the business, another factor that can affect the growth and success of your business is using a enterprise investment scheme for your finance.

One important source of trends among gardening customers is the National Gardening Survey, a private company that conducts annual surveys of consumers of garden-related products. The NGS has recently released its 2015 survey.

The full survey is quite pricey, but in today’s column we summarize the available highlights with an emphasis on the gardening customer’s perspective.

The bottom line of the survey findings has been summed up as “a bold, exciting future for garden retail!!” That’s good news for your local garden center because it reflects growing interest among gardeners.

The NGS estimates that 75% of all U.S. households are undertaking some level of gardening. That works out to 90 million households, an increase of six million households over 2014.

When analyzed by age, 5 million of the additional gardening households had participants in the 18–to–34-year-old range, the group often called the “Millennials.” Meanwhile, the number of households with participants in the 55+-year-old range reportedly remained steady. (This leaves an increase of 1 million households presumably with ages 35–to–54.)

So, gardening customers got a little younger, on average.

The average annual expenditure on gardening rose from $317 to $401 per household, a stunning 26% increase year–to–year, and about 10% over the average of the previous five years. This combination of more customers and more spending makes the lawn and garden industry optimistic.

The overall receipts of this industry total $36 billion, which is notably about three times the Hollywood box office receipts. Still, household spending for gardening products and services, when adjusted for inflation, remains well below the peak reached in 2003.

The NGS’s findings don’t reveal why the rate of spending for garden items lags below the historical peaks, but one plausible interpretation is that gardeners are getting smarter by using online information.

The NGS has concluded that garden customers are discovering the information they want through online research and then seeking validation at their local garden centers. This pattern contrasts with past practices in which customers asked garden center staff for basic information.

The NGS recommends that garden center should focus more as project success centers, rather than hand-holding discovery centers.

As your local garden center modifies its services in this way, you must find answers to your gardening questions on your own, using online resources, books and magazines, and fellow gardeners. Local garden societies can be important sources of basic gardening information.

This column often refers to online sources of gardening information, and will continue to include helpful web addresses. The success of any search for information begins with a thoughtful formulation of the question. Books have been written on strategies for asking the right question, which is central to critical thinking, but acquiring basic factual information about gardening need not be complicated. Many questions for such information can begin with “how” or “what,“ e.g., “how do I plant a tomato?” or “what is a good way to plant a tomato?”

When seeking such information online, many search engines can respond to natural language queries, but they are really oriented to keywords. You will get pretty much the same response by entering “tomato plant.”

The staff at your local garden center surely will continue to respond to your factual questions, but the Internet will be more readily available and will offer a deeper trove of information.

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Architectural Plants in the Garden

A current project in my garden involves relocating a specimen plant to a more prominent site, to take advantage of its current and anticipated appearance.

The plant is Giant Cabuya, a member of the Agave family (Agavaceae). In English, Cabuya means Agave, but it might also mean fibre. The plant’s botanical name is Furcraea foetida ‘Mediopicta’.

Native to the Caribbean area and northern South America, this succulent plant is widely grown as its variegated leaves can create a five-foot wide display and a spectacular presence in the landscape.

Brazilian Plant

Furcraea foetida ‘Mediopicta’

It will produce a 25 feet tall flower stalk on an apparently unpredictable basis. The inflorescence is unremarkable in appearance but reportedly strongly fragrant. The specific epithet, foetida, means “stinking.”

Once the presents its great flower stalk it will die. Like other monocarpic plants, e.g., the Century Plant (Agave Americana), it will propagate itself by generating adventitious shoots, or “pups.”

The plant’s strongest points are its colorful leaves, which first attracted my eye. Because it was labeled as native to Brazil, I brought it into my garden as a plant familiar to a Brazilian graduate student who was staying in my home. (He recognized it, but was more interested in his studies of microbiology.)

I put the Giant Cabuya in a large terra cotta pot, where it grew well for more than a year, and spread about three feet wide. I learned that it would reach its maximal spread only when grown in the ground.

I had recently renovated an overgrown cluster of Peruvian Lilies, and reshaped the planting bed into a roughly circular form. The new bed, currently without plants, needed redesigning, with a focal point. A dramatic sculpture would be appropriate but not in the budget, so a large plant with architectural character could serve as the purpose of a focal point.

This was to be the new home for the Giant Cabuya.

The bed was large enough for the plant to grow to five feet wide, and eventually to throw up its malodorous flower stalk.

A short list of plants can be useful as focal points in the landscape. Large succulent plants, particularly those in the Agave family, have good qualities for this purpose. This is a matter of individual preference of course, but long, sturdy leaves can form a roughly symmetrical display that is readily perceived as sculptural.

For an interesting overview of architectural agaves, visit the website of succulent expert Debra Lee Baldwin, navigate to Videos and look for “Six Great Agaves for Your Garden.” In this video recording, renowned agave hybridizer Kelly Griffin casually demonstrates agaves that would work well as focal points in the garden.

In addition to the larger agaves, several other plants have architectural value. If your garden could benefit from an eye-catching, prominently placed plant, look for candidates when you visit your local garden center. A dramatic feature could add interest to your landscape.

Pruning Tomato Vines

A great many tomatoes are available to home gardeners, either as seeds or seedlings. We are already well into the growing season, so if you enjoy growing tomatoes you are probably already past the stages of selecting a variety or planting seeds or seedlings.

If you are already skilled at pruning your tomato plants, and doing the job in a timely manner, you will not need to read this column.

For the rest of us, let us review the pruning process, with an emphasis on corralling a runaway tomato vine.

The first bit of knowledge about growing tomatoes is that the multitude of cultivars includes just two types: determinate and indeterminate. The determinate plants develop a number of stems, leaves, and flowers, as predetermined by their genetics, and then stop growing. The fruits (actually berries according to the experts) all ripen at the same time, relatively early in the growing season. Pruning of these plants only reduces the harvest.

The indeterminate plants continue to grow and produce stems, leaves, and fruits throughout the season. These are the plants that need controlling.

Expert grower Frank Ferrandino, writing in Kitchen Gardener Magazine, warned, “Left to its own devices, a vigorous indeterminate tomato plant can easily cover a 4- by 4-foot area with as many as ten stems, each 3 to5 feet long. By season’s end, it will be an unsightly, impenetrable, disease-wracked tangle.”

I am growing three tomato plants this year, all of which are the variety, Super Sweet 100, a popular bite-size tomato. I grew one of these plants last year, watched it produce a bounty of very tasty little tomatoes, and develop into the tangle that Frank F. warned about.

Long after I had cleared the bed, a new spring arrived and several seedlings of Super Sweet 100 appeared. I replanted three of the best, determined to control the plant better.

The goals of pruning a tomato plant are to promote larger fruits (not really an issue for cherry tomatoes), keep the plants tidy, and keep the plants off the ground to minimize the potential for disease. The Super Sweet 100 is a disease-resistant variety, but keeping the plant tidy and off the ground still seems worth the effort.

The basic pruning technique is to remove side shoots, called suckers, that grow in the crotch (axil) between the main stem and the side stems. These suckers can produce fruits, but they tend to develop later than the primary fruit-bearing stems and reduce the plant’s vigor.

Tomato plants grow rather quickly, so the removal of suckers is a weekly task. When the suckers are very young, they can be snapped off without the use of tools.

Despite my nest intentions, my plants were soon well on their way to the predicted tangle. This condition inspired an experiment, which took the form of brutally cutting back branches that were sprawling in all directions and in several instances producing little or no fruit.

Super Sweet 100s (green)

More systematic training surely would have been better, but this approach was really the only option at the time. I expect and hope the plants will shrug off my abandonment of best practices and produce another bountiful harvest of sweet, small fruits.

Those fruits are mostly green, still, but have plenty of time to ripen. I’ll try again next year to prune by the book.

 

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