Reply To: Planting Design Classes

I think Aaron has the right idea of visiting nurseries and botanical gardens. Nurseries will give you a good idea of what’s available and botanical gardens will allow you to see the mature sizes of some of these plants.

Dirr’s Hardy Trees and Shrubs: An Illustrated Encyclopedia by Michael A Dirr is probably a “must have” in your book collection if you work in the Midwest or Northeastern part of the US. Use it as a reference, but be sure to develop your own opinion about individual plants over time.

One of the best ways to learn your plants is to keep your eyes open. You can gain a lot of plant knowledge just by paying attention to them as you go about your daily activities, like visiting potential clients, zoos, restaurants etc. If you see a plant that interests you, but you can’t identify it, take a picture of it and look it up.

Most importantly do not specify plants when you have no idea what their horticultural needs or characteristics are. Just because you see hundreds of Burning Bush planted under a low windows or rows of White Pine planted on 6’ centers doesn’t mean that you should do it. Start with your core plants and build your plant palette as you gain more knowledge.

I think we’ve all made plant choices that we later regretted. At my first job out of school as a landscape designer I specified a cluster of ‘Sunburst’ Hypericum right next to a pool area. I got an angry call one day from a home owner saying that although the newly installed landscape was beautiful, I ruined her daughter’s pool party because the Hypericum had attracted thousands of bees and the girls were not interested in running a gauntlet of killer bees. Learn from your mistakes as well as others.