I am by no means an expert on gardening or designing a landscape, but I have learned a few things over the past 25 years.
A friend from our ward, Tara Luschin, texted me with a request for help:
"Hey Jolayne! I’ve heard several times how great you are at gardening. We just closed on our new house and need to plan the landscaping in the back. I was wondering if you’d be willing to look at our back yard with me and maybe give some tips on areas where certain plants would grow best? Or a good way to set up a garden?"
She sent me some pics of her back yard. I sent her some ideas to get ideas flowing and asked what kind of things she wanted to grow in her garden.
I have a companion plant chart that I have created for my garden, so I sent that over. Here's a page from it:
"This is helpful when planting a garden to know which plants thrive next to others and which plants you should avoid planting next to each other. If this doesn’t include the vegetables that you want to plant, google 'companion plants'.
"I planted in garden boxes and used the square foot gardening method, so the # of seeds/plants per square foot relates to that."
I used to follow a blogger based in Utah that shared planting charts by zone. I can't find her now, but I'll keep looking. Regardless, there are a lot of other blogs that offer similar information.
I sent her my list of favorite trees and shrubs. (I keep this in my file: If I ever build a house again.)
Trees
Autumn Blaze Maple
Sugar Maple Tree
October Glory
Ornamental Pear Trees
Flowering Crabapple
Purple Leaf Sand Cherry
Evergreen Trees
Colorado Blue Spruce
Emerald Green Arborvitae
Baby Blue Eyes Spruce
Bushes
Chinese Holly
Sherwood Compact Mugo Pine
Little Quick Fire Hardy Hydrangea
Annabelle Hydrangea
Butterfly Bush
Dwarf Burning Bush
Autumn Amber Sumac
Shrubs
Hostas (like shade)
Hens & Chicks
Red Twig Dogwood
Azalea
Diabolo Ninebark
Rhododendron
Weigelia
Perennial Flowers
Poppies
Peonies
Dahlias
Tulips
Ranunculus
Coneflower
Roses
Mr. Goodbud Stonecrop
Columbine
Lenten Rose
English Lavender
Annual Flowers
Begonias (like shade)
Grasses
Karl Forrester
Japanese Forest Grass
Dwarf Pampas Grass
Northern Lights Tufted Hair Grass
Ground Cover
Ice Plant
Veronica
Phlox
I also sent some links for garden boxes from Costco. (Just google them if you are needing garden boxes) with this advice:
"I would not go any bigger than 4 ft wide as it gets hard to reach into the middle. Even then I put some concrete pavers in the middle so I can step on those and reach better. "
Tara came to look at some of our trees and bushes. She brought her kids and they were instantly bored. One of her daughters said to me, "Why do people even need a yard this big?"
Why indeed.