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June 28, 2014|By Kathy Van Mullekom, Special to the Daily Press

Your landscape is very much like your home's interior décor.

It grows old, sometimes tattered and torn, and needs updating from time to time. Sometimes, plantings need to be completely torn out and totally replaced.

Our landscape is eight years old, and annually we make changes – taking out stuff that fails to suit our likes or needs or just doesn't thrive the way we expect it to.

Occasionally, we remove an entire bed, like we did this spring. A simplistic planting of dwarf English boxwoods now replaces winter-weary dwarf gardenias.

The new look follows my gardening motto: You grow or you go.

I also want plants to behave or they go. Within the last two years, we removed all rose bushes because the thorns were just too much for my skin. We also took out many ornamental grasses because the annual pruning was more than we wanted to do. Retired, my husband Ken and I have many interests to claim our time, and while gardening is one of them, we don't let the yard consume our lives. After eight years, we have finally fine-tuned it.

Professional pointers

In landscape design classes at Christopher Newport University, I learned a landscape lasts for 10-15 years before it needs at least a partial redo.

Local landscape designers agree.

"When I started my business 21 years ago there was a housing boom in Williamsburg and the bulk of my business was landscapes for new construction," said Peggy Krapf of Heart's Ease Landscape & Garden Design (www.HeartsEaseLandscape.com).

"As time passed it has now become primarily renovating old, existing landscapes."

Krapf says most landscapes need renovation for one of the following reasons:

•Poor initial design which becomes more obvious as years progress (wrong plants in wrong places).

•Bad workmanship and poorly chosen hardscaping/materials that don't stand the test of time.

•Old age of plants and bad or improper regular pruning through the years.

•New owners who have different landscape taste or style.

"I tell my clients that if it is time to renovate the inside of the house, it is probably time to renovate the outside," she said.

"Once a landscape reaches the 12-15 year point many plants have outgrown their spaces or reached the end of their lifespans. Trees should live many years and should be places where they have room to grow to their mature sizes. Nothing is sadder than beautiful trees, just reaching their maturity, that need to be removed because they were not planted in the right place to begin with."

Renovating a landscape can be tricky, Krapf said. Sometimes it is necessary to remove all the plants and begin fresh. Other times some plants can be left in place and pruned or reshaped and mixed with new plants.

"When mixing new with old, I try to purchase larger-sized new plants so there is less contrast between new and old," she says.

Some shrubs can be rejuvenated -- cut back hard to remove old growth and stimulate new, younger growth. Many deciduous plants and evergreens such as Japanese hollies, boxwoods, and Chinese hollies can be cut back hard in early spring, and will grow back and be serviceable for many more years. Overgrown evergreens can sometimes be "limbed up" into tree forms to give them new life. Valuable plants can be transplanted to other locations where they have more room to continue to grow.

"I have several clients with beautiful landscapes that are 15 or more years old," she said.

Regular maintenance and pruning make all the difference. "An analogy I often use is with children — if you discipline and train them from the time they are young they will generally turn out the way you hoped they would," Krapf said. "If you let them become wild with little direction, they get permanently out of control."

At Smithfield Gardens in Suffolk, horticulturists Ann Weber and Jeffrey Williamson encourage homeowners to pay attention to the information on plant tags before buying pieces that will outgrow their spaces, and cause crowding problems earlier than needed.

"Shrubs never pay attention to their tags so a plant may end up being a little larger than you thought," Williamson said.

"Some maintenance pruning may be necessary but most gardeners can handle it. No landscape is ever maintenance free."

Eric Bailey of Landscapes by Eric Bailey in York County agrees you need to allot time for any yard.

He says to make sure you have the time and resources to maintain your landscape.

"I would say four hours a week depending on the size of the landscape."

To keep your expectations realistic, Bailey recommends you "plan, plan, plan" your landscape, choosing the right plants for the right places. For example, don't plant a white-flowering Natchez crape myrtle that grows 30 feet tall when you have a place that should accommodate an eight-foot-tall plant.

"If plants are selected for the correct sun/shade exposure and planted according to their ultimate size in three to five years, you will have a full lush landscape without overcrowding or the need for excessive trimming or pruning," adds Tish Llaneza of Countryside Gardens in Hampton (www.countrysidegardens.biz).

"But every landscape requires tweaking periodically –whether it's a color scheme change, compensating for the ever-increasing shade canopy, or the sudden loss of a shade tree. Most perennials benefit from root division every three years and some will even decline in vigor if left to their own devices. Vigorous vines and deciduous shrubs benefit from rejuvenation pruning after years of neglect. Rejuvenation pruning takes three years if done correctly," Llaneza said.

"For traditional foundation planting bed, it's sometimes just easier and cost effective to start over from scratch," she said. "This allows you to change your bed lines, try new plants and take advantage of new trends in landscape design."

Kathy's yard

When Ken and I built in York County eight years ago, we thought long and hard about the look we wanted and how much time we wanted to spend in our one-acre yard. He's retired and I work part-time from home, so we have plenty of hours to devote to gardening but other interests also claim much of our time.

We opted for no foundation plants, just small beds on each side of the front steps. With this plan, our brick foundation stays clean and dry and looks nice without plants around it.

Our beds are four huge spaces sculpted with large curving lines so we can enjoy their views from our many windows. All of the beds have a mix of small evergreen and deciduous trees and shrubs and perennials that attract bees, butterflies and birds. Statuary in bronze and other durable finishes and teak benches and chairs are strategically placed among the plants. I plant no annuals, and do few edibles because we shop farmers markets.

We do all our own general gardening, except for some heavy winter pruning by Jay Veitz of Nature's Own Landscaping and a Virginia Tech-based lawn-care program by Grass Roots of Yorktown.

Ken and I share the yard work, although I admit he has the hardest part. I tend to weeds, prune for looks and health, fill feeders, tidy up and plant small stuff. I like to mow part of the yard when I can. I probably average four to six hours a week, depending on the season.

Our yard is Bermuda, which Ken mows every five days with a self-propelled, electric start, mulching Toro that gives him good walking exercise.

He also sees to the trimming – 1,242 linear feet along two driveways, a couple of walkways and those huge beds we enjoy so much. He edges with a Black & Decker battery-powered Grass Hog, which is lightweight and easy on the arms, and uses a Stihl blower to clean everything, including the street, which we consider a part of our property maintenance.

This year, we put down 240 two-cubic bags of cypress mulch, a process we find easier than bulk mulch. Our system: Lowe's delivers the bags on pallets, Ken places the bags, I open and dump the bags and Ken spreads the mulch.

Our other gardening tools are basic and simple – large-blade and small-blade shovels, bypass pruners, loppers, pruning saw and several rakes – our favorites are two six-tine, metal flex rakes used to groom the edges of beds after they are trimmed and to move mulch around when removing and installing plants.

All in all, our yard is a labor of love and a contribution to our good health. We enjoy it for the exercise, prize it for the beauty and value it for the wonderful wildlife – bluebirds, bees and butterflies – it brings into our life. My great-grandmother gardened until she was 92 and I hope I'm blessed with the same good fortune.

Contact Kathy at kvanmullekom@aol.com.