Green Meatballs

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.   First up…

       Green Meatballs.   This refers to shearing bushes and shrubs into round balls or any other geometric shape.   This is a legitimate horticultural technique that is used in special circumstances such as in Disneyland.   It is called topiary. However, it is not to be used in normal home landscaping.   Most homeowners do this for one of two reasons. The first is that they don’t know any better. They know the plant needs to be “pruned” and this is the way they have seen it done. The other reason is that they don’t want the plant to “get out of hand”.     Many landscape companies do this because the customer expects it and it requires no real pruning knowledge. This can be corrected in several ways. First of all, putting the right plant in the right place will greatly reduce the need for pruning. If a plant does need pruning, the hedge shears should not be the first tool you pull out. Get yourself a good pair of hand pruners. There is nothing wrong with wanting to reduce the size of a plant. The way to do this is to selectively remove branches to reduce the overall size of the plant leaving it looking better, but not like it just received a “haircut”.   To be continued…

Rick Rice