6 Tips for New Landscaping Projects 🪴 Advice From a Designer

Just getting started? Here are 6 tips for new landscaping projects. This advice from a landscape designer will help you avoid common mistakes and give you a running start on a successful garden project.

00:00 Welcome!
00:32 Tip 1: There’s no such thing as a blank canvas
01:24 How learning from your space can teach you where to put a bench swing
02:28 Example: A landscape design idea for a spot where a pool used to be
03:10 Tip 2: Some weeds can take over the universe, others are delightful friends
05:08 Tip 3: How to not be terrified of big landscaping goals
06:47 Tip 4: What is actually realistic to expect when it comes to landscape transformations
07:40 Tip 5: Why you should “slow down to speed up”
08:28 Tip 6: Don’t forget the opportunities to make a positive impact (it really makes a difference)
09:19 Two examples of easy choices that can really make a difference

I HAVE EXCITING NEWS!
🪴 Design-Your-Own Landscape Layout ONLINE COURSE is now available!
For do-it-yourselfers who want to create their own landscape design, but just need a little extra guidance.

DIY Landscape Design Online Course: Design-Your-Own Landscape Layout

I’ll walk you through the design process, step by step, so you can create a practical, hand-drawn “layout plan” (a landscape design plan that shows the layout of the finished design).

How to survey your site for characteristics that will influence your design (saving you time and money by playing to the strengths of the space)
How to easily collect ideas and inspiration, and apply professional design strategies to bring inspiration to life in your own space
How to measure your yard and make a base map (a hand drawn, to-scale map) to realistically test ideas that match the size and scale of your space
How to research low-maintenance plant possibilities, and keep your planting plan organized for efficient plant shopping and installation

🪴🪴🪴 Learn more and sign up, here!

DIY Landscape Design Online Course: Design-Your-Own Landscape Layout

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More resources:

🌱🌱🌱 FREE MINI COURSE: How to choose the perfect plant (and put it in the right place): https://www.gardenprojectacademy.com/free-mini-course-choose-the-perfect-plant/

🌱 How to make a landscape design: THE STEPS

🌱 Landscape design for busy people 🪴 Time saving strategies from a designer

🌱 Landscape Design Tips for Reducing Weeds 🌱 Less time weeding & maintaining your yard through design: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqDfLKLBQQk&list=PLT4LLM91GU1vCdjFTxJ_KorHiqKuEo3jr&index=10

🌱 Landscaping Mistakes that Lead to More Maintenance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8Lf4YprlkQ&list=PLT4LLM91GU1vCdjFTxJ_KorHiqKuEo3jr&index=5

🌱 MORE Landscape Design Mistakes to Avoid https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EIxiD6OVaw&list=PLT4LLM91GU1vCdjFTxJ_KorHiqKuEo3jr&index=3

And if you’re new here, hello! Welcome to Garden Project Academy, where I offer online courses and resources to help you with your garden project! My name is Eve Hanlin, I’m a certified horticulturist and landscape designer from the Pacific Northwest corner of the USA.

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Tag me in your projects @gardenprojectacademy. I would love to see what you’re working on!

Remember that everything in my videos are for informational purposes only: It is entirely up to you to decide what is best for you, and your landscape.

©2024 Garden Project Academy LLC

Hello and welcome to Garden Project Academy. If you are starting a new landscaping project, then I have a few just random tips to share. These are topics that come up pretty frequently when I’m working with a client, helping them design their own landscape, things I’m constantly reminding people of.

And so if you’re just at the start of a new landscaping project, I think that these will help. And if you’re new here, hello, my name is Eve. I’m a landscape designer. I’m a horticulturist and this is Garden Project Academy. Welcome.

I’m offering online courses and resources to help you with your next garden project. So check out the resources in the description below. If you want to learn more. My first tip is to learn from the space. And this is because there is no such thing as a blank canvas and landscape design ever.

I don’t care how small, devoid of life, how flat the space is. There are going to be certain characteristics that can act as strengths or weaknesses, depending on what you design. There’s so much to learn about any space before starting.

And it’s critical that you invest a little bit of time in learning about the space. So this can inform your design later on. It’s typically called a site survey. And this is a process that could be as simple as spending some

Time in your backyard with a very detailed list of things to consider. Or you could even spend a couple of months. Some people spend even a year watching everything that’s in their space, just making these observations. Uh, about how things maybe change throughout the year, what plants come

Up later that you maybe didn’t know were there, weeds, uh, you know, other characteristics, the angle of the sun, for example, and just a simple example of how Paying attention to these characteristics can inform your design layout. A bench swing. Let’s say you’re doing a landscape design for your backyard.

You could place this bench swing anywhere in your backyard technically, but that bench swing will be best placed in a spot where it gets summer shade and a little bit of winter suns. That just increases the likelihood that you’re going to go out and sit in it and enjoy it.

So this requires having an understanding of what areas are going to get sun at different times of the year. How is the angle of the sun going to change depending on the seasons, what trees are going to lose their leaves or their needles versus those that are not evergreen versus deciduous.

Of course, if you place your bench swing in a spot where it’s going to be covered in frost in this damp, cold, shady corner, you’re not going to sit in it in the winter. And if it’s baking in the sun in the summer, you’re just not going to enjoy it.

It doesn’t matter how beautiful the space is. You’re just not going to be out there spending time on this bench swing. So this is just an example of how. You can learn from the space and then design to its strengths or its weaknesses.

Another example of something you might consider a weakness and how you can turn that into a strength. Let’s say that the people who lived in the house before you had a pool in the backyard and there’s this area in the yard that is extremely compacted. Um, it’s very level. It’s very hard.

You’re, it’s going to take years of amending the soil to be able to plant things there successfully. Instead, you could perhaps rearrange the layout of your design. So you could put something. Were that compacted soils an asset that could be the location of a patio, a

Seating area, for example, learning about the space can then inform your design. Later on, there’s so much to learn about the space before you get started and taking time to do this will increase the quality of your landscape design significantly.

My second piece of advice is to learn about the weeds that are on site. This is just a common mistake that can lead to hours and hours of extra work down the road. Learn the weeds that you have on site because not all weeds are equal. Not all weeds are bad actually.

Some of them can be really beneficial, really useful, and some of them you could strategically leave in the space for certain reasons. Sometimes having something covering the soil is better than not. A really common first instinct when you’re starting a landscaping project is to go out and clear things immediately. Leave everything intact.

Learn who’s already growing on site because not all weeds, again, are equal. There are some species of weeds that are very invasive or very aggressive and can be difficult to remove. And if you don’t identify these weeds at the start of a project, then what

Tends to happen is people will go, they’ll clear the space, and then they’ll start installing their garden beds. They’ll start planting things, things will start doing well. And then these particularly invasive or aggressive weed species are going to start coming up.

Then you’re going to be trying to manage these species, trying to get rid of them while also simultaneously in the same spot, trying to care for the plants that you would like to grow there, and it just becomes this exhausting process

Of trying to get rid of some plants and take care of others at the same time. You’re going to save so much more time if at the start of the process. You slow down, you learn what’s on site, and learn what might require a little bit of special attention.

There are some weed species I recommend you, once you identify that they’re a little bit more aggressive, sometimes quarantining this particular species until you get rid of it or get a really good grip on it before you make any other changes is, is the ideal method.

It’s one of those slow down to speed up methods. You’re investing, you’re investing this extra time in getting rid of this. problem that would become much bigger down the road. Reach out to experts if you need some ideas or help. Local, regionally specific experts are ideal and they can provide you with

Specific tips for managing these weeds. My next tip is a little bit of a mindset tip. It’s that These projects are not always as overwhelming or as much work as it seems. If you have a dream landscape design idea, sometimes you can, you can be

Very excited, but it can also feel almost unattainable or overwhelming, especially if you don’t have much gardening or landscaping experience. So, of course, assuming that we’re sort of based in reality, it is possible to design something that’s not. It’s entirely unrealistic and magnificent, but most landscaping projects can be

Broken down into bite sized projects and things that you can chip away at. If you have some really big dreams and ideas too, there’s always this trade off, um, you know, if you don’t have a big budget, but if you have more time, you

Can get creative about how to install, uh, something that will achieve the same goal. So, overall My piece of advice is that it is possible and it’s not always as much work as it might seem. It’s not always as overwhelming as it might seem.

If you have a really good plan, you have steps and you can kind of prioritize what’s most important. So the solution to the overwhelm is a little bit of planning. If you would like help creating your own landscape design, I have my online course, Design Your Own Landscape Layout.

There’s a link to that in the description below where I, I have this video course where I guide you step by step through the design process so that you can create your own landscape design, even if you’re not a designer, even if you don’t have gardening

Experience, you’re not an artist, you don’t have fancy technical skills. I show you how to take your ideas, how to organize them, how to put them on paper, how to do a site survey, how to, how to hand draw a landscape design plan that’s functional and practical, and that will help you

Accomplish your landscaping goals. Next, you need to remember that it doesn’t need to happen all at once. This landscape overnight transformation thing, it’s, it’s really common when you’re reading or learning about gardens, uh, or landscaping in general, uh, there’s TV shows, there’s all, there’s all kinds of gardening

Media, or it’s about how to quickly transform your landscape overnight. This just isn’t realistic most of the time. A lot of the times it’s about having a really good plan and then chipping away at it. As you have time, as you have an afternoon on the weekend, when the

Sun’s out, you have these steps and then you know what to work on next. I will say that if you need to neaten things up relatively quickly, there are some methods, you know, where you can neaten up the edges, spread a nice fresh layer of mulch across the landscape.

This is going to increase the aesthetic appeal of your landscape almost instantly. But a quality landscape redesign, a transformation is realistically going to happen in phases. Overall, more time planning is going to lead to a better design and an easier process. Just across the board, there’s a little bit of a repeating

Trend in a lot of these tips. But now I’m referring to the process of making a landscape design overall. Sitting down with paper and drawing things out, taking measurements. And investing this time in articulating the vision and then breaking that down into a plan, that’s an investment that’s going to pay off significantly.

It’s really easy at the start of a project to feel this pressure, you know, the sun’s out, you know, you’re a mess, you only have so much time, you just want to go out and get started. You can optimize the resources you have on site, you can plan your budget, just

Overall, anytime that you’re feeling a little bit overwhelmed about the process, or if you’re sitting down and making your design and you’re like, oh I wish I was outside right now. Get the design done first. It’s going to be worth it.

And if you’re at the start of a new landscaping project, if you’re dreaming up these ideas, I want to remind you that even the smallest landscaping projects can have a really big positive impact. And this is something that as a designer, I have been surprised as I’ve walked

Into someone’s yard, someone who’s been focusing on creating a wildlife habitat in a tiny backyard, for a long time. Walked into their yard and just been shocked by the amount of wildlife, the birds and the butterflies and all of these native pollinators.

I’ve been absolutely shocked by the level of impact that someone with a little bit of drive and a desire to make this positive impact can accomplish. And this is one of the main reasons why I have created Garden Project Academy, this

Channel, my courses, so I can be here to remind you that of the impact that you can have with your landscaping project. With this opportunity, you have to do some landscaping and also show you the way. An example, there are insect species, I guarantee there are insect species in

Your region that are facing extinction simply because they don’t have the plants, the native plants that they need to complete their life cycle. It really is that simple. It’s deciding to plant one plant over another plant. One thoughtfully selected, regionally appropriate, low maintenance berry

Bush can produce pounds and pounds of produce with virtually no work. So, I just want to remind anyone who’s starting a landscaping project, if you’re starting a landscaping project, it really is as simple as making these choices. All of these little things that you’re doing for your landscaping project can

Really add up to have a positive impact. Good luck, and if you have any additional questions or you want to learn more, check out the resources. It’s linked in the description below. Thank you so much for watching and happy gardening.