Hi All!
Am a city native and am moving in a week to a house upstate NY on one acre. I don't know the first thing about gardening! Am hoping to find some helpful tips. Our home is surrounded by overgrown shrubs and small(ish) trees. If I want to begin to plant flowers, or to clean up the shrubs, perhaps removing them and replacing them with flowers, where do I begin? Since it's already the end of July should I wait until next season?
Thanks so much!
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AllyNatalia
- Newly Registered
- Posts: 1
- Joined: Mon Jul 24, 2017 9:22 pm
Welcome to the forum. To take things, out anytime. You should try to id the shrubs if there are any you plan to keep. After the shrubs come out you should probably get a soil test and amend the soil with compost. I would wait on planting until the right time. In the meantime you can do some planning on what you want to grow and you can run that up on the forum. People who live in your climate can give you advice on what grows well.
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ID jit
- Green Thumb
- Posts: 339
- Joined: Tue Nov 01, 2016 10:00 am
- Location: SE New England: zone twilight or 5b... hard for me to tell some days.
Welcome.... remember it is a learning process and there is always more to learn.
Given you have no experience and have a jungle to tame...
If you want to keep the shrubs and just get them back to manageable, take a small chain saw the cut them a few inches above the ground. Most shrubs are pretty resilient and will grow back.
Overgrown ornamental trees too close to the house.... you are back to cutting, digging and uprooting or getting the stumps ground out.
Hosta and Siberian iris are both really hard to kill, don't require much other than someplace to grow roots and some water. They are very low maintenance and do not look badly at all. (Could be a quick, simple first step for you). Both also generate a fair amount of "greens" for fall composting to mix in with the leaves which you will probably have or have easy access to.
With Hosta... watch Craigs list, most people who have them are looking to pass some along very where years. Also, you can plant early season daffodils or tulips and iris in the space between the plants. The early season stuff will come up first, do what it does and go back to dormant before the hosta really gets going mid to late season.
Good luck with it all.
Given you have no experience and have a jungle to tame...
- Come up with some kind of plan for the end result FIRST. Otherwise you will probably get to undo and redo a lot of hard work. Also start driving around and learn the area and see what works well in the local environment.
- Buy good tools. They save you time, money and frustration/aggravation.
- Start thinking in terms of progressive steps, one improvement at a time.
- Take the time and effort to build good soil first, otherwise you are setting yourself up for failure or at minimum a lot of extra work and disappointment. Most house lots have 2" - 6" of some kind of 'top soil' over whatever the builder pushed in there as fill - not so good for garden beds.
- Given what you described, I would take a 12" - 14" chainsaw, a string timmer and raze the whole thing in prep for starting over / starting fresh. To me, neat and organized "in progress" looks infinitely better than "I'm just going to ignore the jungle and weeds.".
If you want to keep the shrubs and just get them back to manageable, take a small chain saw the cut them a few inches above the ground. Most shrubs are pretty resilient and will grow back.
Overgrown ornamental trees too close to the house.... you are back to cutting, digging and uprooting or getting the stumps ground out.
Hosta and Siberian iris are both really hard to kill, don't require much other than someplace to grow roots and some water. They are very low maintenance and do not look badly at all. (Could be a quick, simple first step for you). Both also generate a fair amount of "greens" for fall composting to mix in with the leaves which you will probably have or have easy access to.
With Hosta... watch Craigs list, most people who have them are looking to pass some along very where years. Also, you can plant early season daffodils or tulips and iris in the space between the plants. The early season stuff will come up first, do what it does and go back to dormant before the hosta really gets going mid to late season.
Good luck with it all.
I'll just share my personal experience in case it's of any help.
When we bought our house it came with some nice garden spaces, most of which were pretty well kept so it's a bit different than dealing with a jungle. However, like you I didn't have much experience with gardening and I also wasn't quite sure what plants I had. For the first year I just watched what came up, tried to ID everything and posted a lot of photos on here to figure out if it was something to keep or something to pull.
The first couple years I just worked around what we inherited for the most part because I felt bad killing healthy plants and bushes... but I've since learned what I want and what I don't want. I've learned how not to prune which eventually has helped me learn how to correctly prune. Learning what you have in your garden is the biggest key because shrubs prefer to be pruned at different times depending on if they bloom on old or new wood, etc. Some overgrown shrubs can be pruned wayyyy back and potentially be ugly for a season or 2 but make a full recovery with a better shape and size for your space. However, some shrubs won't survive this method.
As far as removing shrubs and small trees go, I've done this a couple of different ways. I had a hedge of yews in front of my house that I just cut to the ground, covered the stumps with black plastic bags for a year and mulched on top. I planted near the stumps but obviously couldn't plant right on top. The trunks on the plants were massive so this was just the easiest route since digging them seemed impossible. I've done this with a number of particularly large shrubs I didn't feel like trying to dig out.
For complete removal I've worked after a good rain when the soil is saturated (you can also saturate the soil yourself the night before). First I cut the bush back so I can really get to the trunk of it, then I dig a large hole around the perimeter of the plant and either chop the roots as I go with a pick ax or try to dig them loose. I push and tug on the trunk as I go to help loosen it and break some of the roots. There's always that one seemingly tiny root left on the bottom that won't break free and holds the plant in place. I've removed numerous rose of sharon, nandina, and large holly plants with this method. It's a workout for sure and I'd suggest doing it on a day when you could work out some frustration because I've pretty much wrestled these beasts with my full body weight in the process.
As far as tools go, I'd buy a good pair of hand bypass pruners, big loppers, a pruning saw, a shovel (my wooden handled shovel broke this year removing a shrub so I bought a new one with a fiberglass handle in the hope that it will be more durable) and potentially a chainsaw.
Good luck! You'll have to keep us posted.
When we bought our house it came with some nice garden spaces, most of which were pretty well kept so it's a bit different than dealing with a jungle. However, like you I didn't have much experience with gardening and I also wasn't quite sure what plants I had. For the first year I just watched what came up, tried to ID everything and posted a lot of photos on here to figure out if it was something to keep or something to pull.
The first couple years I just worked around what we inherited for the most part because I felt bad killing healthy plants and bushes... but I've since learned what I want and what I don't want. I've learned how not to prune which eventually has helped me learn how to correctly prune. Learning what you have in your garden is the biggest key because shrubs prefer to be pruned at different times depending on if they bloom on old or new wood, etc. Some overgrown shrubs can be pruned wayyyy back and potentially be ugly for a season or 2 but make a full recovery with a better shape and size for your space. However, some shrubs won't survive this method.
As far as removing shrubs and small trees go, I've done this a couple of different ways. I had a hedge of yews in front of my house that I just cut to the ground, covered the stumps with black plastic bags for a year and mulched on top. I planted near the stumps but obviously couldn't plant right on top. The trunks on the plants were massive so this was just the easiest route since digging them seemed impossible. I've done this with a number of particularly large shrubs I didn't feel like trying to dig out.
For complete removal I've worked after a good rain when the soil is saturated (you can also saturate the soil yourself the night before). First I cut the bush back so I can really get to the trunk of it, then I dig a large hole around the perimeter of the plant and either chop the roots as I go with a pick ax or try to dig them loose. I push and tug on the trunk as I go to help loosen it and break some of the roots. There's always that one seemingly tiny root left on the bottom that won't break free and holds the plant in place. I've removed numerous rose of sharon, nandina, and large holly plants with this method. It's a workout for sure and I'd suggest doing it on a day when you could work out some frustration because I've pretty much wrestled these beasts with my full body weight in the process.
As far as tools go, I'd buy a good pair of hand bypass pruners, big loppers, a pruning saw, a shovel (my wooden handled shovel broke this year removing a shrub so I bought a new one with a fiberglass handle in the hope that it will be more durable) and potentially a chainsaw.
Good luck! You'll have to keep us posted.