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 county’s cooperative extension office has master gardeners whom you can call for advice and can help you diagnose plant problems if you bring or send them specimens. Other local sources of gardening expertise:
Brookside Gardens
1800 Glenallan Avenue
Wheaton, MD 20902
301-962-1400
www.brooksidegardens.org
Horticultural Society of Maryland
Cylburn Arboretum
4915 Greenspring Avenue
Baltimore, MD 21209
410-821-5561
www.mdhorticulture.org
Kenilworth Park & Aquatic Gardens
1550 Anacostia Avenue NE
Washington, DC 20019
202-692-6080
www.nps.gov/keaq
U.S. National Arboretum
3501 New York Avenue NE
Washington, DC 20002
202-245-4523
www.usna.usda.gov
University of Maryland Extension
Home and Garden Information Center
12005 Homewood Road
Ellicott City, MD 21042
410-531-5556
http://extension.umd.edu/hgic