A Whole Lotta Nothing

In the landscaping world, just like any other profession, there are those little things that “do it yourself” guys do that make the pros cringe. They are our “nails on the chalkboard” experience. I, like many of my colleagues, have my personal pet peeves. Let’s go through a few of them and hopefully you can gain some insight as to how a professional landscape designer looks at your landscaping. By avoiding or correcting your landscape mistakes you will have healthier plants as well as knowledge that can give your home that extra something. This will make your neighbors stand up and take notice and hopefully show some of the guys who call themselves “pros”, why these things are not helping to achieve the goals of good landscaping. The topics we will discuss include: Green Meatballs; The Green Necklace; A Whole Lotta Nothin; Seeing Red; The Minnie Pearl Syndrome; Crape Murder; Runway Lights; Volcanoes; and The Real Thing. We will be addressing these issues over the next several newsletters.

This month we will tackle “A Whole Lotta Nothin”

A Whole Lotta Nothin. This is the misguided practice of having large expanses of mulch beds with no plants or very few plants. This is way out of proportion to the overall landscape and negates the purpose of mulching beds. Mulch beds are supposed to be a planting bed. They are not supposed to be a reason to have less grass to mow. If you have these you should at least have a ground cover in them with a few well placed plants for good scale. Add red mulch to this equation and you really have an eye sore.
To be continued…

Rick Rice