Sprucing up your new home

Be patient and wait: Like your house, the yard needs to settle first before you landscape

 

You've just moved into a new home and want to start turning the front yard from mud to a landscaped paradise. Don't do it, cautions Trevor Cullen, co-owner of Cullen Landscaping, which has been designing interlocking pathways and raised flower beds for Ottawa homes since 1999.
You'd think an entrepreneurial landscaper would be encouraging garden makeovers, but it's a bad idea to move too quickly, says the 31-year-old, who works with his father and company founder, Peter Cullen, overseeing crews that carry out 150 jobs a summer.
Soil settles and there are always problems with interlocking pathways shifting and dropping down if you move too quickly, Cullen says. "Usually people wait two to five years before landscaping after moving into a new home. The minimum wait is one year."
The problem is air in the soil that is used to build up levels close to a home after construction is finished. It takes one freeze and thaw session for the soil to compact and be stable to handle a walk or interlocking laneway.
Cullen has seen soil compact so much that it drops 20 to 30 centimetres, which plays havoc with steps leading down from a concrete porch pad. The porch pad is connected to the house so it won't drop; the steps, of course, are not attached and can drop, creating a hazard that can trip people up. and it also costs money to rip up and repair a heaving walkway or raised flower bed, he says.
Cullen Landscaping (cullenlandscaping.ca) will provide a design and shopping list for $199 to $299 to help avoid common landscape mistakes for those who want to save money and invest sweat equity.
Proper construction with enough excavation and a deep layer of granular gravel are key, Cullen says, adding material membranes, not plastic, aid in drainage and help make the transition between the gravel and underlying soil of Leda clay.
It's also vital to slope the soil away from the house when planning beds for flowers and shrubs, otherwise water will gather around the home's foundation, leading to possible flooding in the basement.
Gardeners should also pause before plunking new plants into the ground.
First prepare the soil, possibly cooperating with neighbours to invest in a load of soil. "It doesn't make sense to buy bags of soil for a new garden," he says.
You need enough nutrient-rich soil to mix with the Leda clay or soil left behind by the builder. "Plants will survive for a few years with a few inches of soil, feeding off the nutrients, but then they will fade as the root system looks for nutrients."
New beds should be dug down a minimum of 15 to 20 cm, with 25 cm of good soil mounded up.
The next step is to plan your selection of plants, starting with trees that suit the size of the lot. The worst possible choice would be willow trees because they suck up moisture and their root systems are invasive, damaging weeping tiles and playing havoc with foundations.
"They are evil," says Cullen, who also warns people away from putting maples too close to a house because they are way too big.
Instead, he prefers the Japanese Ivory Silk Lilac tree or the Canadian Serviceberry, which usually grow to a height of 4.5 metres (15 feet). You can also visit the City of Ott awa's website for their list of recommended of trees (ottawa.ca).
Source http://www.ottawacitizen.com/