Planting Success in Low Maintenance Situations

Landscape a vacation home where plants do not receive much care to help them get established.

Soil Moist
Item # 99756 		Soil Moist™ Water Holding Crystals

1 $6.49
3 or more $5.99
Chamaebatiera millifolium
Item # 35240 		Chamaebatiera millifolium
Fernbush

each $8.29
3 to 6 $7.99
7 or more $7.79

Item # 99804 		Deep Water Pumpkin Ollas (Oy-yas)

each $21.95
2 or more $21.00
The 'Big Easy' Water-Wise Garden
Item # J9530 		The Big Easy Water-Wise Garden

each $192.25
Deer-Off
Item # 99884 		Deer-Off

each $19.99
  • Topic: Low Maintenance Gardens
  • Author: David Salman
  • Keywords: landscape, water, drip irrigation, Planting Techniques
  • Date: August 2001

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Summer vacations are on everyone’s minds this time of year. For many folks that involves traveling to their vacation homes. Over the years, I have had many questions regarding how to landscape a vacation home where the owner is often absent and the plants do not receive much care to help them get established.

Establishing a new planting where watering is infrequent can be a real challenge. It is not a good idea to plant in the months just before summer when dry, hot weather is sure to follow. For many areas of the country, I would suggest fall planting to allow the winter rains to keep the new plants irrigated and help them to establish roots before next summer.

A simple battery operated water timer with a temporary drip system can make the difference between success and failure for areas of the country that don’t get regular summer rains. Dripworks (dripworks.com) comes well recommended as a mail-order source for your drip irrigation supplies.

When possible, plant in low areas that collect run-off moisture from the surrounding terrain or near the house where run-off from the roof can be directed toward the plantings. Shallow ditches that follow the contours of slopes and hills make ideal planting sites. Pile the soil on the down-hill side to help increase the water holding capacity of the ditch as rain water and snow melt run downhill into it.. All these techniques will increase the amount of water plants get throughout the year thereby increasing their chances for long-term survival.

Because browsing animals are a definite hazard in rural areas, select plants that do not attract them. Consider plants that are also xeric and low maintenance. Fortunately there are some excellent plant choices that meet all these criteria.

I would suggest the following:

  1. For early spring color an assortment of early mid- and late-blooming Daffodils would be excellent. Daffodils are also safe from burrowing pests like gophers, moles and voles.
  2. For color from late spring through late summer Achillea “Moonshine” (Moonshine Yarrow), Perovskia atriplicifolia (Russian Sage), Salvia nemerosa “May Night”, Salvia greggii “Furman’s Red”, various Lavandula species (Lavender), Agastache rupestris* (Licorice Mint Hyssop), Teucrium aroanium (Gray Creeping Germander), Santolina chamaedryoides (Gray Santolina) and Penstemon pinifolius* (Pineleaf Beardtongue), Penstemon cardinalis* (Cardinal Beardtongue) are recommended. This is a good core group of xeric plants. (* not favored by deer in NM and CO and worth a try in your area.)
  3. Woody shrubs are also an integral part of any naturalized landscape. Artemisia tridentata (Big Sage), Chrysothamnus nauseosus (Rabbit Brush), Chamaebatiera millifolium (Fernbush), and Mahonia hamatocarpa (Red berry Mahonia) are all good choices.

Young plants should be covered with chicken-wire cylinders that are staked to the ground to protect them until well established. Plants straight from the nursery have not been grow “hard” and have not fully developed the chemicals in their leaves and stems that make them unpalatable to animals.

Deer Off is a more aesthetically pleasing way to repel browsing animals but requires that you remember to re-apply it to new growth throughout the growing season and just before the onset of winter.

Trees should have their trunks wrapped with tree wrap in the fall and unwrapped in late spring. This protects the barks for winter sunburn and damage from feeding rabbits under the cover of snow.

Getting plants off to a good start begins with the planting hole. Mixing a good quality compost into the soil improves the soil’s water-holding capacity and encourages strong root growth. Also add Broadleaf P-4 water holding crystals into the planting hole as they help hold water in the root zone and protects plants from dry conditions for the first two growing seasons (until their roots grow beyond the original planting hole). After planting, mulch around the base of the new transplants shades the soil and keeps it cooler and moister.