The other night I watched the classic holiday comedy, Christmas Vacation. Clark Griswold provides endless laughs in the course of his struggle with ladders and Christmas lights. Occasionally, the lights actually work and at one point Clark has the following exchange with “Aunt Bethany”:
Aunt Bethany:Is your house on fire, Clark? Clark: No, Aunt Bethany, those are the Christmas lights.
While anyone can load their house up with a gazillion flashing holiday lights and plastic reindeer, there is a lot of planning and work that goes into decorating a home tastefully for the holidays.
Ideally, the entire curb appeal should work together to create a scene that enhances the building and looks like it belongs there. The shrubs, trees, and other landscaping (along with the structure) are important elements to the scene you are creating.
So, how can landscaping enhance the holiday decor? Here are 5 ways to plan your landscape to work well with holiday decorations.
1. Select plants that have good winter interest
Try to use a variety of plants that not only look good in the summer, but also have good winter interest. There are many trees and shrubs available that have interesting bark and stem color (think red twig dogwood).
Utilize ornamental grasses, shrubs, and perennials that will catch the snow on their stems and branches. On a cold day or night the snow will glisten in the sunlight or from the glow of holiday lights.
Also, use a mixture of evergreen and semi-evergreen shrubs. Semi-evergreen shrubs are those such as Fernbush and Broom that have green stems and whose leaves may persist into the winter.
The following video by Brad Lancaster illustrates how much water the landscape is capable of absorbing- Check it out! I first saw Brad do a presentation a couple of years ago in Denver, and he is a really funny and effective presenter with some great ideas.
How can this be applied to our own residential and commercial landscapes?
Brad advocates a change in the way rainwater and storm drainage is thought of. Often times buildings are designed to get water to drain off of the site as quickly as possible, and into an elaborate system of storm drains. This approach treats rainwater as a nuisance, where it is not being used on the site at all. With a landscape design and drainage design that captures and directs water so that it can be used for gardens, flowers, and trees, this water can be utilized on-site as a valuable resource.
This is the official blog of Outdoor Design Group, Colorado Landscape Architects. For more information about our business and our services, click here.
No, this is not a new species of tree selected for it’s graceful “V” shape.
When large trees are planted directly under power lines the utility companies will hack them back with no regard for for aesthetics. In general, it is always best to avoid placing trees too close to any utilities or permanent structures.
Here are a few guidelines and things to remember:
1) In addition to being aware of overhead wires, always call for underground utility locates (dial 811 in Colorado)prior to doing any digging or planting any trees. These fine folks will come to your property and locate with markings all of the underground utilities.
Juniper bushes are the most despised landscaping plant in existence. I know this to be true, because 75% of the time that I talk with a homeowner or property owner about renovating their landscape, they say something like “those Junipers have GOT to go!”.
Juniper bushes are common in older landscapes. Here they were not given adequate room, so they have been sheared off along the walkway.
Why is this? I think there are a few main reasons, aside from the fact that they are prickly beasts that we have all tangled with a one point (either landing in one while playing as a kid, or getting that annoying rash on your arm while trimming them) :
1) They were simply overused in the past. People are just tired of them and want something unique and new. And since they live for ages and rarely die, they are often the only living survivors guarding the front doors of homes in any older neighborhood.
2) They were not planted with enough room to grow. Many of the varieties get quite large after say, 20 years, and quickly outgrow the planting bed. Because they grow too large for their setting they require excessive pruning to keep them at a manageable size. This pruning then exposes all of the dead old growth inside the base of the plant- ugly!
3) The aforementioned prickliness. And good luck getting the baseball you were tossing around out of the center of that green monster.
Given these negatives, why then should you consider using Juniper plants in your landscape?
Here a few images I snapped from my “dry Xeriscape” garden at my home in Arvada, Colorado. This garden faces southwest, and receives little to no supplemental watering. The area was previous an irrigated lawn before I converted it to this Xeriscape.
Delosperma (Red Mountain and Mesa Verde Iceplant) and Actostaphylos x coloradoensis (Panchito Manzanita)
Dry Xeriscape Garden
Erigonum umbellatum (Kannah Creek Buckwheat)
Delosperma (Red Mountain and Mesa Verde Iceplant)
This is the official blog of Outdoor Design Group, Colorado Landscape Architects. For more information about our business and our services, click here.
