Developing a Plant Schedule for your Landscape
Year Round Gardens: Developing a Plant Schedule for your Landscape
A fun and easy exercise in your garden is to develop a listing of when plants come into bloom, fruit, or fall color during the year. Known as a plant schedule, this is especially useful when making decisions on plant types for new planting designs or to enhance existing gardens. While spring and fall months are some of the more showy times of year for plants, it is very easy to develop landscapes that offer interest throughout the year in the Deep South. For example, in a perennial garden, combining coreopsis (spring), yellow coneflower (summer), asters (fall), and evergreen hollies (winter) in an area will provide year round interest.
Combining plants with a range of bloom times creates a year-round garden.
Most often, we favor blooming time when choosing and selecting garden plants. Blooming is an important consideration for adding color and interest, but is not the only way to liven a landscape. Other important plant factors include interesting trunk forms, colors, and textures; stem colors; seedheads and fruit, fall, winter, or growing season leaf colors; leaf textures or forms; or tree and shrub forms in winter.
Each month simply note what plants are providing, or could provide, an interesting feature. For planting designs or existing landscapes, this can often lead to identifying months (most often winter months) where more garden interest could be provided. Selecting plants by times of display is fairly easy. Many searchable online plant query Web sites allow you to select possible plants by seasonal time of bloom, or by listing interesting features such as seed and fruit during the year.
The following plant schedule (PDF) was developed for a garden in central Mississippi as an example.
Publications may download photo at 200 d.p.i.
These factsheets were written by Robert F. Brzuszek, Assistant Extension Professor, The Department of Landscape Architecture, Mississippi State University.
Publications
News
The Mississippi State University Extension Service is leading a research project aimed at enhancing pollinator habitat in managed turfgrass of the Southeast.
I had planned to write again this week about more great cool-season color options, but we had a landscape and garden crasher named Hurricane Zeta make a mess on the Gulf coast.
This storm surprised most folks with its intensity and property damage. It also did a lot -- and I do mean a lot -- of damage to trees that resulted in widespread power outages. My family and neighbors were lucky that our power was off for only 48 hours.
A moss pathway is an easy way to add a special touch of elegance, enchantment, and royalty to your landscape. A pathway covered with bright green moss seems like something a king or queen would have in their landscape, right?
I love when the calendar strikes December 1, because it means we are officially in the Christmas season. Now, I know it seems like many stores have had their holiday decorations out since before Labor Day, but none of that counts until we get to December.
OCEAN SPRINGS, Miss. -- An upcoming workshop will offer training for people who want to turn their piece of land into an edible landscape, no matter the size.
The Alliance of Sustainable Farms will host its monthly workshop Nov. 8 at Galloway Family Farm in Ocean Springs.
Topics will include growing an edible landscape and square-foot gardening.
Galloway Family Farm has been in operation for more than 50 years, growing crops usually only seen on the Gulf Coast in Mississippi, including pawpaws, Japanese plums, bananas and kiwis.
