However, having had people at my local nurseries tell me all sorts of bullshit, and then have another employee contradict that info on my next visit, I am somewhat gun shy at landscaping advice.
So, unless you were going to actually do the work, and then take care of the landscape for at least a year, I wouldn’t find you (as a stranger at a craft show) any more credible than the people who work in nurseries and tell you anything to sell you something.
Sorry if I sound bitter, but over the years we have invested quite a bit of money on plants and bushes and trees that were for sale, but totally incompatible with the local desert environment. They might have mentioned that plant A only grows if it has afternoon shade, or that bush B needs heavy daily watering to thrive here, or that tree C needs to be brought indoors during the winter.
By the time we figured it all out, we had spent far too much money and spent far too much time digging and replanting yet another doomed addition to the landscape.
We now have a backyard with Oleander trees and bushes, Chaste bushes, African Sumac, Mexican Bird of Paradise, and some other assorted desert flora.
Granted, we were new to the area and sort of stupid - my tip to others moving into a new geographical area: look what is growing in other yards and just go with the flow. If you don’t see any weeping willows, orange trees or lilacs in the neighborhood, there is probably a very good reason.
I think the book has already been done, and I’ve seen similar ideas around here. Here is the problem, featherlou, as I see it -
Does Calgary have all one soil type? All one elevation/grade? All one pH? Does everybody want to look alike?
The city that I garden for puts in free gardens for many residences. We have about 12 basic plans for boulevard-type gardens, and STILL, neighbors want to make sure they are not having the same thing as each other. Even then, we end up needing to “tweak” most gardens to work with the existing conditions.
I think you’d sell a few - then you would be plagued with folks saying “but… help me with this… it isn’t covered in the plan!” Watch out for a bad reputation from that…
I’ve seen simliar “kits” in garden catalogues. It’s give you the choice of several sun, shade and mixed gardens, for one low price. They send you the plants. It’ll include a picture of the finished product fully mature, with a decription and map of all the plants included.
My worry with this would be that people who want a package deal of this nature (meaning, aren’t willing to invest either much money, or much time in sussing it out for themselves) aren’t going to be very sensitive to issues like sun exposure, wind, drainage, and soil pH. In my experience, a planting which might be perfectly suitable in three of those categories might find itself doomed by the fourth – and this particularly applies to plantings close in to the home. While you may have available to you typical lot sizes, the type of house that’s built on that lot has a good deal of impact on how the landscaping is best designed, and finding that out could piss people off if they’re looking for a complete no-brainer.
That said, I can see such a notion being fairly successful, and I’m guessing you’d probably recommend a fair number of native plantings to offset some of the concerns I brought up in the first paragraph. Maybe throwing in some tutorials on soil testing, mulching, adding compost, that sort of thing – might be helpful. Good general advice from an expert in the area can’t hurt, since you don’t know people’s experience levels going in. Good luck! May you be as successful as Lois Hole.
You might have a text printed throughout the design, like a kind of watermark.
“Featherlou’s Landscaping. Want this design taylored to your garden? Visit www.featherlou.com”
