Large garden plantings are often
best done in phases. In this
massive border, many trees and
shrubs were planted in the
autumn. Perennial placement
and planting began in late April
(taking several weeks), followed
by annual planting in mid-May.
Training and consulting the
landscape crew on the
maintenance schedule is an
ongoing process.
Perennial Garden Planting
and Maintenance Schedule
I
f you have a perennial garden, there will always be something for you to do
with your time. It may be a large physical undertaking, such as renovating
the whole thing, or perhaps it’s the small, simple mental pleasure of thinking
about the garden and how beautiful it is, or was, or is going to be next year.
The information here provides a guideline to the seasonal tasks involved
in managing a perennial garden, and it is meant to be just that—a guideline.
Only by working with your garden will you gain a more thorough under-
standing of what needs to be done and when. I am quite a taskmaster, with
a penchant for list writing. I think you will find it helpful to do the same.
Walk around your garden and take notes on what needs to be done. Such notes
can be used to organize a priority list with target times or dates for the various
tasks—put the timeline on your calendar. In the spring, when things are beyond
hectic in the garden, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll forget which plant you
wanted to move and where, which one you intended to divide, or which one you
wanted to remove from the garden altogether. If you have the schedule and list
that you started compiling the previous year, you will have one less thing to think
about at the moment. This is particularly critical in the landscaping industry;
with maintenance work to be done on many different gardens, it’s almost
impossible to remember what you wanted to do and when in each of them.
A word on garden journals. I’d like to be able to tell you that I keep one—one
of those sweet journals with pretty drawings and inspirational phrases. I have
made the best efforts in that direction but, to date, have failed. I do keep records
in my weekly calendar so that I can see when I performed a certain task in my
own or my clients’ gardens. I keep notes, although brief, on specific maintenance
tasks performed at each client’s gardens on certain dates. For instance: “The
tradescantia and coreopsis were cut back, the alchemilla were deadleafed, we did
general deadheading and weeding, and we staked the hillside aster that the dog
stepped on at the Brown residence on 20 July. There were two of us there and it
took 1 1/2 hours.” All these notes are helpful for planning in future years. It’s a
good idea to keep some kind of records, either in a book or on notebook pages (as
I do, although they are usually covered with splashes of soil), in your personal
garden files or, for professionals, in each client’s file. Such notes have allowed me
to compile the schedule contained here.
