Plotting Your Course for Plant Purchases
Last updated May 2019
To get started, you’ll need to know your garden’s soil type and acidity, how things drain, and how much sun different parts of your property get. When making a plan (or adding to an existing one), you’ll want to match plant types with areas where they’ll probably thrive. You should account for how your property will look both right away and years from now when your plants have grown. Without a plan, you could wind up with an assortment of plants that do not complement each other in size, shape, or color. You might end up with shade where you want sun and with the view from, or of, your house obscured. Worst yet, you might pay for expensive plants when inexpensive ones would work just as well.
Make like an HGTV star and do a rough drawing showing your house, other structures, property lines, and desired plants. Get guidelines and ideas from gardening websites, friends with attractive outdoor spaces, and the experts listed below.
If you want professional help, you have several options. A garden center or landscape contractor can send a designer to your place. And if you want to do your own buying and planting, you can pay a consultation fee for help preparing your own plan or a design fee for the designer to draw the plan. Or get a free consultation by asking a nursery for a landscaping estimate.
You can also hire a landscape architect or garden designer to provide complete service, including consultation, design, assistance in selecting a landscape contractor, and supervision of plant selection and contractor performance. Or get only the consultation or the design. Your first conversation with an architect may be free; from then on, fees are set in various ways.
For more information on landscape designers and landscape contractors, see our article on landscaping help.
Your local cooperative extension office has master gardeners you can call for advice and help with diagnosing plant problems if you bring or send them specimens. Other local sources of gardening expertise:
UMass Amherst Center for Agriculture, Food and the Environment
Stockbridge Hall
80 Campus Center Way
Amherst, MA 01003
413-545-4800
www.ag.umass.edu
The Arnold Arboretum of
Harvard University
125 Arborway
Boston, MA 02130
617-524-1718
www.arboretum.harvard.edu
Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources
251 Causeway Street, Suite 500
Boston, MA 02114
617-626-1700
www.mass.gov/agr/gardening
Massachusetts Horticultural Society
The Gardens at Elm Bank
900 Washington Street
Wellesley, MA 02482
617-933-4900
www.masshort.org
Tower Hill Botanic Garden
11 French Drive
Boylston, MA 01505
508-869-6111
www.towerhillbg.org
The Trustees Boston Region
200 High Street
Boston, MA 02110
617-542-7696
www.thetrustees.org