Over the last five or so years, we’ve tried to refresh the landscaping around our house. Each time we’ve gotten designs from a local landscaping company and had them plant the things they recommended (that we agreed with). We’ve spent several thousands of dollars all told on these efforts and only have a couple of trees and a few small plants still alive and thriving. The track record so far is for about half of the plants to die the first year, we get them replaced under warranty, and their replacements and most of the rest of the plants die the second year. I’m sick of wasting money on this and fed up with the “professional” lanscaping companies but we still need to fill in some gaps left from dead plants.
First, the basics: We’re in Northern Virginia, so hot and humid summers and frozen winters. We get plenty of rain in the spring and early summer and then have dry conditions in the late summer. We don’t have a sprinkler system other than laying down hoses with sprinklers on the ends.
The main issue I need help with right now are the beds in front of our front porch, which is west-facing but very well shaded by mature bradford pear trees. There used to be large holly bushes there, that got overgrown and ugly so we had them replaced with mountain laurel. I liked the laurel bushes - they were very pretty when they bloomed the first year, but they died soon after that. According to the landscaper, they should have done fine in that shady spot. I’m wondering if perhaps the hollies made the soil too acidic or if they sucked all the nutrients out that the laurels needed. Thoughts?
I would like to plant mountain laurel there again if I can figure out what the problem was. Or is that a bad spot for them and I should plant something else?
Oh yes, I knew I left something out. We definitely have lots of Virginia clay, although these planting beds have been amended with years and years of compost and disintegrated mulch. But perhaps we need to mix in some sand?
Sounds like the first thing to do is get a soil test. In addition, you need to look at moisture levels/drainage.
Hollies will not cause soil to get more or less acidic. Mountain laurel is susceptible to problems including excessive dryness (including in winter) and soil pH above 6.5.
A good landscaping/garden design firm should be able to help you determine what soil and/or watering problems may exist, and not just assure you “well, it should have thrived there.”
Thanks. I guess the next question is how do you identify a good firm as opposed to the crappy ones we’ve used before? We used ones that are well known in our area. Their designers recommended stuff for us based on the light/moisture/etc, they have their laborers plant everything and we never heard from them again, except to send more men out to replace the things that died. In other words, they seemed good at the beginning but clearly didn’t give us the desired outcome.
Maybe find someone with a nice looking yard and ask them?
What I know about Mt. Laurel comes from my mother who planted it in her yard. Wasn’t too tough, the property was on the side of a mountain in Pa. covered with the stuff. Oddly she couldn’t get ivy to grow well in the same spot. I guessed on the clay from your location, I grew up in Maryland, definitely a different type of soil in that area.
My wife is part of a local gardening club. $25/month in dues gets her lunch and better advice on gardening than any professional we’ve met. (They even do exchanges of cuttings, so we’re getting free plants too).
Anyway, there are too many variables here for me to try to address, ranging from too little/much water, too little/much drainage, insufficient nutrients, bad soil chemistry, pests/disease, herbicide over-spray from the neighbors, etc.
There is a neighbor on the other side of the block from us with a showplace front garden. I’ve jokingly thought of asking them to landscape our yards for us but know that would be obnoxious. However, maybe they wouldn’t mind giving advice specifically about the mountain laurel. I never see them working in their yard, so they must do it in the wee morning hours. Would it be creepy of me to send them a letter to ask?
The gardening club is also a good idea. I’ll check into that!
Some people with showpiece gardens hire people to do the work for them. In which case, at least you’d get a referral to a company that doesn’t kill all of their own plants.
Individuals vary, but many obsessive gardeners are like any other obsessive hobbyist. Once you get them started talking about it, they won’t shut up, especially if can give them a challenge that isn’t just another newb question they’ve dealt with a hundred times.
Bit of an update for this thread. There are no garden clubs in my area, so I’ve set that aside for now and am working with our county extension. As I was digging out soil samples for the extension office to analyze, I think I found the reason the laurels died. Those planting beds have about 1 inch of mulch, 1/2 inch of old mulch that’s turned to soil and was full of big FAT worms, and below that was shitty clay dirt with some small roots in it but not much organic or nutritious for growing things.
We’ve been laying down fresh mulch once a year for the past decade, so I’m really surprised the organic layer is that shallow. So, while the extension office works on giving us the chemical analysis, I have a question for you guys:
We’re thinking of scraping away the mulch, working some good soil and sand into the clay and then replacing the mulch. How deep can we reasonably work stuff into the clay? I’d think to have really healthy shrubs, they’d need at least two feet, and maybe three, of good stuff to put their roots in. Do rototillers work that deeply? Or is that shovel work?
Also an idle thought about our experience with the landscapers. It’s annoying that the designer proposed plants for us with the unspoken assumption that we had good soil, without testing it or even looking at a shovel full. If they’d done the 30 minutes of work we did just digging out some soil for testing, he would have had better information for recommending new landscaping.
I also kind of wonder about the laborers who planted the stuff… if as soon as they dug the holes for the laurels they saw the shit they were going in and thought to themselves “well, these aren’t going to last, but… it’s not my job to say anything”.
Maybe it’s another example of how business doesn’t care about quality, only initial sales. :dubious:
You don’t need three feet of topsoil; rototiller depth will be fine. Your soil test and county extension will give you a good idea what to add to the soil.
Don’t put a layer of sand on top of the clay thinking it will help drainage – it turns into something resembling concrete – sand and clay is used to make roads.
I guess I made a lucky guess about the clay. Again, not an expert on Mt. Laurel, but seen plenty of it in the wild and my mother’s house. It grows naturally in the loose humus found on forested mountain sides. You can pull large bushes right out of the ground if the soil is loose enough. I don’t think you need three feet, but a lot of peat moss or composted material down to about one foot is probably needed to simulate those conditions. Maybe even add a layer of gravel a foot down for better drainage. I’m just throwing out ideas to follow up on, my horticultural experience is limited to vegetable gardens.
Because mulch/compost decomposes (releasing nutrients in the process) it doesn’t surprise me that an inch every year turns into three inches after a decade.
I agree about mixing sand - bad idea.
Probably all you need is coarse organic material - compost, moss, or even something like shredded green waste. (Not necessarily something like cedar or mulch, though. Many things intended as ground cover retard plant growth.) I think some people mix in volcanic ____ and now my brain is failing for the right word, but it’s very light and absorbs water well. Probably more expensive than cheap green waste.
If drainage is a problem, a French drain might be necessary to help the water find its way out.
Probably Perlite? It’s volcanic and I think fits your description fairly well. And maybe it’s overkill but Azomite may help provide trace minerals. It’s volcanic in origin too and many use it in the garden and may throw a couple of pounds in when planting trees as well.
Okay, somewhere between rototiller depth and a foot. I was just wondering what the plant’s roots would do when they reached the crappy clay layer. I didn’t mention that while we were out there, I pulled out the dead laurels. Bare handed and I’m not a strong woman - pulled them easily out of their holes. It looked like they lived only as long as their roots were in their original root balls, and once they started expanding into the ground around them they died.
I think you misread my post. After 10 years of adding mulch, there was only one inch of mulch and about 1/2 inch of good black soil (that used to be mulch). Kind of surprised those worms were so fat and healthy looking in their tiny half inch world!
Organic material repeatedly worked into the soil is best for amending clay (and I’ve had to deal with some of the worst, including Houston-area gumbo clay). Many if not all states have one or more university extension services that deal with horticultural issues and can help advise you.
A landscaping service can be called on to do the heavy labor.
Another alternative is to have raised beds/boxes constructed and plant in good soil in those.
Oops, I did misread it. Anyway, I’m still not entirely surprised. The organic material is decomposing or being digested. You can blame the worms, but they’re good in the long run.
My yard also suffers from heavy clay, and I see much the same thing when I dig. The amount of usable topsoil is rarely more than an inch or two. I’ve been moving around a lot of my shrubs this month, and many of them don’t have a root ball so much as a root pancake.
Hell, I sometimes pull up dandelions with roots growing horizontally. They can grow through my concrete driveway, but even they can’t beat clay!
Clay has a habit of self repairing also. Dig down into and it will just swell up with water and fill the void again. It’s too damn dense for stuff to grow well, which is maybe how it’s not all gone near the surface now.