2 Tips for Landscaping With Summer Plantings in Mind in Pleasant Valley NY

Are you thinking about summer and looking forward to relaxing on the patio with family and friends? Was last year’s landscape not as alluring as you wanted? Winter is the ideal time to plan an eye-catching landscape. To help you plan, here are 2 tips for landscaping with summer plantings in mind in Pleasant Valley, NY.

Related: Landscaping with a Naturalistic Aesthetic in Mind in Hopewell Junction, NY

1. A Layered Landscape

Some of the most appealing landscapes are those that involve layers. Most often, people think of layers as a progression of sizes from the foreground (lawn and groundcovers) to the mid-ground (a mix of short and taller flowers and shrubs) to the background (tall trees). 

However, this is not something you want to use in every part of your landscape: the result is boring and predictable, and it also makes a landscape feel much smaller and boxed-in. When you’re standing on your patio, you’re on a flat surface. If the surrounding landscape is layered traditionally (as described above) all of the summer colors will be concentrated in rings around your property.

A more dynamic approach uses unpredictable layers that bring the color closer. Use a more random planting theme that “touches” the patio in some spots, and draws the eye outward in other spots. 

For example, if you looked out at your landscape from the patio, starting on the left there could be a small planting area with a combination of flowering shrubs and ground covers. Moving clockwise, you could have access to the lawn. As your eye moves to the right, a rock garden with boulders, ornamental grasses, and flowering annuals moves outward into the landscape in a graceful arc. As your eye moves outward into the backyard, the grass could become a walkway of sorts, leading to “islands” of native perennials and annuals along with summer-flowering trees.

This variety of vertical dimensions and unpredictable layering makes your backyard very interesting; and unless you have kids and need a lawn area for them to play games, you could consider a wilder and more colorful landscape featuring native plants that are not only beautiful but hardy and low-maintenance.

2. Staggered Bloom Times

To achieve color that lasts all summer long, choose a variety of plants that bloom each month. This is worth discussing with a landscape designer or with your local plant nursery experts. 

Ideally, you’ll have a mix of plants that ensure a constantly changing kaleidoscope of colors from a mix of ground covers, ornamental grasses, annuals, perennials, flowering shrubs, and trees, and if you have a pond, aquatic plants.

You could take several approaches. One option is to cluster plants that bloom together, to guide the eye to specific parts of the landscape (for example, once lilacs are done blooming, your eye would be drawn to a grouping of roses or poppies). This is a good way to create temporary focal points. 

Another option is to group plants so that every part of a plant bed is blooming at any given time. You could, for example, choose a flower that blooms in May, and group it with one that blooms in June, one that blooms in July, one in August, and one in September.

Grouping plants by sun and water needs helps streamline maintenance that lets you use the clustered approach of everything blooming at once in a particular spot; or the sequential blooming approach.

Related: Preparing Your Landscaping for Winter Like a Pro in Wappinger Falls NY and Poughquag NY Areas