If you leave everything to the landscaper, you’ll get the same plants and flowers everybody else does.

Contractors, and even many designers, don’t like to take risks with plant selection. And they don’t want to spend any more time than necessary to get your trees, bushes and beds planted. They’ll reuse the same palette of widely available plants for every job — leaving an unsettling mark of similarity on every one.

When you pay thousands of dollars to have your garden redone or to have a new one created from scratch, you want it to be unique. You want it to reflect the colors and plants you love.

So even though you didn’t install it, you’ll want your fingerprints on every nook and cranny. And if you’ve gardened in the past, chances are you have some strong opinions on what you want to see for the next decade.

Plants make the garden, so be prepared before you start the project.

Collect a list or pictures of plants that you find particularly noteworthy. Include trees, both evergreen and deciduous; shrubs that flower or offer other seasonal changes; vines that drape and cling; and perennials for bold color year in and year out. And know which ornamental grasses you find unappealing.

This isn’t just a standard list; it should have specific varieties. So many fabulous improvements have been made on the old standbys that you will want the best choice of what’s available today, not just what’s easy for the landscaper to obtain.

That means doing some research and carefully creating a list. For example, rather than accepting a standard saucer magnolia, you can specify a Black Tulip magnolia with fabulous burgundy-red blossoms that bring truly unusual interest to the early-spring garden.

Because of tissue culture, the gardening term for cloning, genetic variations have produced some interesting plants with colored foliage.

Nowhere is this more apparent than with Heuchera, or coral bells. The species’ first unusual leaf colors, which appeared a decade ago, were mostly in the purple range. More recently, varieties such as Amber Waves and Marmalade have emerged to produce golden-orange foliage tints that bring three-season fire to the garden.

If you leave it to the landscaper to choose the plants, you’ll get an ordinary purple or perhaps just the old green-leafed coral bells.

If you’re looking forward to the ease of a native or wild garden, creating a listing of desirable native species is even more important. Most landscapers are unfamiliar with a large percentage of the native plants suitable for gardens. And these plants might not be widely carried by wholesale growers. You’ll have to hunt down sources, too, but it’s well worth the effort.

One of our most outstanding natives is the redbud tree, yet few know about the incredible Forest Pansy.

Don’t expect your landscaper to do the research; he or she probably is too busy.

This leaves you to make the lists and call specialty growers for availability in your area.

Creating a plant list for your landscaper is a fun shopping effort. You get to hunt down plants that are well above the ordinary types by using local, online or catalog sources. Sometimes you can even shop for rare species at botanical-garden sales. It pays off because you’ll have the various sources all ready to go when your landscaper starts rounding up the plants.

Hiring a landscaper yields a finished garden in no time without backbreaking labor. But in doing so, we become separated from the act of garden-making.

Keep your fingers in the figurative dirt through research, so when the garden is finally in the ground, it will reflect your refined choices and cultivated good taste.

source : www.columbusdispatch.com Maureen Gilmer