How to avoid over planting

While both can look great for a time there is a big difference between a full garden and an over planted garden. Many people want their gardens to look lush, full and overflowing few have the time and patience to deal with one that is over planted. What is an over planted garden? While like it sounds it is simply a garden which is home to too many plants. This might not necessarily look bad or create problems especially when the plants are newer but it creates a lot of problems down the line.

When a space is over planted it quickly becomes a situation where there isn’t enough nutrients, physical space and water available to sustain all of the plants in one area. Pretty soon plants growth is stunted and competition for resources starts. Not long after that some plants die off and it never seems to be the ones you were ready to let go of either.

An over planted garden is also a losing battle for the gardener trying to tend it. In jest a few years it requires constant pruning, pulling and fertilization and eventually no amount of work will make it look the way you want it too.

Some homeowners fall victim to over planting themselves when they want a full look right off the bat. More commonly though over planting is the end result of landscapers coming in to design a space. They want it to already look full when they are done with the project but in a couple of years it looks messy and some of those expensive stubs might even be on their way out.

The key to avoiding over planting a garden is just a little bit of patience and planning. That’s easy to say but not so easy to do when you love the look of a lush full garden right now! Here are my tips for avoiding ending up with the plant loss and upkeep of an over planted space long term:

• Patience grasshopper try to imagine 3 or 5 years down the line when taking those itty bitty shrubs out of their pots on day one.
• Read the tag for the plant’s mature dimensions and mark the mulch at the outer limits of where it will eventually be.
• Step back and try to imagine what your landscape will look like just a few years down the line.
• Remember that you’ll need space to get in and around every plant to prune it and take care of it (maybe extra if it has thorns!)
• By planting fewer things in the same space you’re actually saving a lot of money, maybe even enough for a whole other garden!
• Negative (aka empty) space is actually really important in making your garden look neat and cared for.
• If the empty (for now) space in a garden still bothers you and waiting years down the line is just more patience than you have plan to fill it temporarily with something you can easily remove in a few years. Hostas are a great choice since they grow to fill a space so quickly and have relatively shallow roots that can be easily removed when the time is right.