12 Basic Perennial Garden PlantinG & Maintenance
Design and Its Relationship
to Maintenance
T
he amount of maintenance a garden requires depends precisely on
how the garden was designed or planned. The chosen setting, style,
size, and shape of the garden as well as the plant selection, arrange-
ment, and spacing all intertwine to determine the type of care
needed. Questions to be asked before the design stage include:
How much time and money can be devoted to the upkeep? Who is
going to do the maintenance—the owner, a professional crew, or a
combination of the two? Whoever is doing it, do they know how to
care for the plants chosen? Even the best-designed garden never
lives up to what its creator visualized if it is poorly maintained.
There is no question that the planning stage of any perennial garden is
thrilling; there are so many great plants from which to choose. The fact that
many perennials require maintenance to one degree or another is usually
overlooked at this stage, placed far away in the back of one’s mind behind all the
fantastic colors, cut bouquets, butterflies, fragrance, and other anticipated
attractions. Such selective memory is not just the province of beginners; this
thinking is true of my mindset as well when I’m planning gardens. Nonetheless, I
don’t feel that a garden should be planned solely around the premise of mainte-
nance—this would be too limiting and inhibiting. I do believe in a balance,
however, and this balance is going to be different for different people. For some,
gardening 4 hours a week constitutes low maintenance; for others, anything over
30 minutes moves into the high-maintenance category. (Based on a 9-month
period, I average 16 to 20 hours of gardening each month in my own garden,
Hiddenhaven, which is about 4600 sq. ft.—of course certain months see more
work than others.) Still, some gardeners are willing to invest time for mainte-
nance in the spring, but prefer a golf club or a tennis racket to a pair of pruners in
the summer. Such preferences need to be considered during the planning stages.
For practical purposes we’ll make the “mid-maintenance” garden the one to
strive for in this book. Even better, let’s not think of it as maintenance but as
gardening! How much gardening are you or your clients willing to do?
In this chapter I will present general points that should be considered when
planning a garden. The following chapters offer more specifics on the ins and outs