Habitat house provides lesson in landscaping from scratch

By C. W. Cameron

For the AJC

Imagine you’re a brand new homeowner. You know you’ve got to do something with that yard, but everything in home maintenance, from changing furnace filters to mowing the yard, is new to you.

In June, Dollethea Chandler and her four children moved into their first home, a house they helped build through Atlanta Habitat for Humanity. As finishing touches were being put on the house, the landscaping was going in.

The landscape planning was done by Rich Sussman and colleagues from the Central Fulton Master Gardeners. Mature hardwoods and pines meant grass wouldn’t grow in much of the front yard, so that meant large areas would be mulched with pine straw. The shaded front yard also called for shade-tolerant foundation plantings and they chose azaleas to provide spring color and evergreen coverage.

Hostas and ferns were selected to provide low plantings around the front walk. In the backyard, two large maples were planted to provide future shade. Leyland cypress went in along the side yard for future privacy. The plantings went in on the day the house was dedicated and Chandler and her children took over responsibility for keeping things going.

For over a decade, the members of the Spalding Garden Club of Dunwoody have been teaching Atlanta Habitat for Humanity homeowners how to care for their new plants and landscaping. Club members have obtained donations of hoses, sprinklers, garden tools and plants, many from members' home gardens, and provided them to the homeowners free of charge at an annual workshop. The project, headed by Julia McClanahan of Sandy Springs, has received attention nationally.

Maybe you’re facing your first yard or perhaps you’re just ready to completely redo your existing landscape. The principles these gardeners used in planning and maintaining these landscapes for Habitat houses can be applied in any situation where you’re creating a landscape from scratch.

Study the situation

What kind of light do you have? Lots of sun? Shade? This will determine what plants will survive.

What is the access to water? Check http://www.gaepd.org/Documents/water_use_schedules.html to learn when you can water. Plan to use mulch to prevent erosion and evaporation.

How much time will you have for maintenance? Choose from the list of foolproof plants below if you won’t be coddling your new plantings.

Get the soil ready

Has the soil been improved or do you have packed red Georgia clay? Unless the soil has been carefully tended, you’ll need to break it up and add cow manure and composted pine bark. Plan on adding a two-cubic-foot bag of compost per eight square feet of soil.

Your county extension office will do a soil test for $8 and that will tell you what else your soil needs.

Choose plants wisely

Remember that plants will grow. Rather than starting with too many plants and having to remove them as they fill in, save money by using smaller plants and spacing them to allow for future growth.

Here’s the Spalding Garden Club’s list of foolproof landscape plants:

Shrubs:

Aucuba -- partial to full shade

Forsythia -- full sun to partial shade

Hydrangea -- partial shade

Leucothoe -- partial to full shade

Nandina -- full sun to partial shade

Perennials:

Daylily -- full sun

Hosta -- partial shade

Liriope -- full sun to full shade

Pachysandra -- full sun to full shade

Sedum -- full sun

Keep an eye on things for the first year.

Make sure your new plants get about an inch of water every week. That means watering if there’s no rain.

Keep up with the weeding. Pulling up weeds when they’re young is easier and the plants won’t have a chance to go to seed and make hundreds, if not thousands, more next year.

For more help, check out the University of Georgia Cooperative Extension at www.caes.uga.edu/extension/.