DIY Landscaping Guide: How to plan, design, and execute! -

If you’re like me, you want your landscaping to look beautiful, but you don’t have thousands of dollars to hire a landscaping company to come it and do your landscaping for you. If you’re not afraid to jump into a project and get your hands dirty, I’ll share my tips how to Do it yourself in my Do It Yourself Landscaping Guide.

Make a plan

Making a plan of attack is the most important step to your DIY Landscaping project. You need to create a plan so it’s easy to stay on task and budget. The plan should include research, design, and a budget (if needed).

Research

Make sure you know your space. Know the region in which you live, as well as the amount of sun your space gets. Both of these things will determine the success of your plants. If you have a shady area, you will need to research plants good for shady areas. If not, you will have to research plants good for full sun. You will also need to know when you would like your plants to bloom. Many plants have different bloom times, this will be important to research. Another important tip is, you should know whether you want perennials (return yearly) or annuals (die after the season) to!

Design

If you’re a landscaping newbie then you might need a little help planning the design. Here are many websites out there that will help you plan for your space. The two I love are BHG.com and GardenPlanner.com I love them both for different reasons. GardenPlanner.com is more for design, where BHG Garden Planner incorporates information and will suggest plants for your space. It goes way more in-depth and detail orientated. BHG.com would be good for landscape newbies.

At this point in our process, we went ahead and broke ground on our space. My husband began mapping out the area with the back-end of a hammer to get a precise line. Then he took the hammer and began to break up the ground inside the line he created. We enlisted the kids to help clean up and discard the chunks of grass and rocks the flower bed.

Shop

In the design & research phase of your DIY landscaping project you should have researched what type of plants or bushes you want for your space. If not, you’re going to want to research what you want for your space.

I suggest setting a budget once you get an idea of what plants you want. Setting a budget is important because once you get to the nursery or home improvement store’s there will be a lot of temptation to buy thing NOT on this list. Having a list on hand and your budget in mind will help you resist the temptation to stray from the list, and will keep you within your budget.

I highly suggest shopping around. I found that fruits and veggies at local nursery were a little cheaper, but higher on other things, like specialty plants.

Execute

Ahhh… You’re in the home stretch. This is the fun part. You’re done with all the brain work, now it’s time to get your hands dirty!

By now, you may have already broken ground on your flower beds. If not, you’re going to need to do this step before you move forward. Make sure you remove all the grass and rock in your space. You may even, till your space if necessary.

When we were planning the layout of your plants made sure to check the tags on the plants one last time to make sure we were spacing the plants far enough apart as well as taking the height of the plants into consideration. Make sure you plant the tallest plants in the back so the shorter plants won’t get covered up once they start to grow.

When figuring the placement of your plants, we took the plants while still in the container and placed them where we thought we wanted them. Doing the will help you visualize the finished project and give you an idea of what plants will compliment each other. And it will be easier to move if you don’t like the layout.

Once you’re done with this step it’s time to plant, mulch and water your plants! Oh, and give yourself a big pat on the back because your DONE!!! You saved yourself hundreds of dollars and now it’s time to sit back and enjoy it!