Out with the old, in with the new!

Landscape renovation is an important part of home improvement. Even with conscientious trimming and maintenance, foundation plantings get overcrowded after 15 years. Depending on how close your trees and shrubs were originally spaced, and what types of plants were used, this overcrowding could begin much sooner.

The current trend in our area is to over plant. While this style of planting creates an established look much sooner, it also creates a need to renovate foundation plantings much sooner. This is especially true when the wrong plants are used for plantings close to a house — plants that grow too fast or large for their allotted space.

Most of our client’s home improvement inquiries regard overcrowded plantings that are over 20 years old. At this advanced stage of growth, shrubs are blocking windows and overpowering the house. These overgrown plantings also crowd sidewalks, getting visitors wet as they brush past them on rainy days. They also give houses that ‘abandoned’ look.

When is it time to renovate your landscape?

It often comes as a great surprise when clients learn that foundation plantings have a limited lifespan, and should be renovated once they are 15 years old. If the right trees have been planted in the right places in lawn areas, they can remain for much longer. It’s the close proximity to foundations and sidewalks that create an earlier need for foundation planting renovations.

While we can attempt to salvage whatever existing plants are still in good shape and could blend with new plantings, it’s been our experience that ‘starting from scratch’ makes the most sense. Mixing new plantings with old plantings often creates too much of a generation gap.