Let George Design Your Garden
February 7th, 2017
If you’re pretty sure you’re going to foul up planning or re-doing your gardens this year, I’ll be happy to bail you out with a design.
Working on a color-coded scale drawing…
Up to now, I’ve offered sketches and scale drawings as an add-on option for the on-site Garden House-Calls service I’ve been doing for 17 years.
This year, I’m adding a cost-saving, design-only option for those interested just in a drawing. Get me the measurements, snap a few photos, and fill out my three-page questionnaire on preferences and goals, and I’ll get you a design.
Since you’re doing more of the work and saving me a visit, you pay only for the drawing time.
I’ve found that a fair number of my customers are mainly interested in a specific game plan for what plants to put where. They don’t necessarily need or want a full-blown, 2-hour, $250 visit with an information packet, ideas, care tips, trouble-shooting, question-answering, etc. etc.
With the drawing-only option, you pay just for the design time at $50 an hour.
I’ll give you an estimate up front based on the size and scope of the area to be drawn. To give you an idea, I can usually design a house-front in 2 to 3 hours, the entire way around a house in 5 to 6 hours, and an entire yard in 8 to 10 hours.
In the end, you’ll get a letter-coded design on graph paper along with a list of specific plants for each of the marked spots. I use graph paper with each box representing one foot. That makes it easy for you to just count the boxes and plant on the dots.
The plant list includes sizes, specific cultivars (along with alternate options in most cases), and how many of each plant you’ll need. You’ll also get instructions on carrying out the project and names of local garden centers that typically sell the named plants.
Additional options are available if you want them. This further helps you keep the cost to a minimum by not paying for things you don’t need or won’t use (unlike your cable TV plan).
The extra options:
* Color-coding for your drawing: $25
Three of my gardening booklets available as options.
* Custom plant-care instructions for all plants on your drawing: $25
* Copy of my “Yard-Care Survivor Manual” (24-page instruction manual for the yard): $8
* Copy of my “Yard Maintenance Schedule” (14-page, month-by-month checklist of what to do when): $5
* Current copy of my detailed, 18-page “George’s Survivor Plants for Central Pa.” list: $5
* Signed copy of my “Pennsylvania Getting Started Garden Guide,” a 240-page Cool Springs Press book featuring the 170 best landscape plants for Pa. yards: $20
* Signed copy of my “Pennsylvania Month-by-Month Gardening” book, a 240-page Cool Springs Press book that details how and when to care for your landscape, laid out in a month-by-month format: $20
Don’t feel bad if you have no confidence in your plant-designing ability. This isn’t easy.
The actual process of gardening might not be that complicated (some would contend otherwise), but the particularly tricky part is plant selection.
It takes years of experience to know which plants run into which problems, where each one is going to be happy, and how to lay out them out in a way that looks good and won’t get overgrown.
Just knowing what plants are out there is tough enough, not to mention staying up to date with new introductions that often out-perform yesteryear’s so-so choices.
I tell people that “regular folks” have a life and don’t have the time or inclination to figure out all of that. But since I’m a plant geek who enjoys reading reports like Mt. Cuba Center’s three-year evaluation of monarda species, plant selection is how I use up most of the memory space in my rapidly aging brain.
It’s possible I also could professionally foul up your planting plan for you, in which case you’ll at least have someone else to blame. But I hope I can jack up the success odds a bit.
I’m still doing Garden House-Calls visits, by the way. So if you prefer the on-site brain-storming and/or have a long list of specific questions, get more details on the Garden House-Calls page of my website.
If you’re interested in either option or have questions, give me a call at 717-737-8530 or email me at george@georgeweigel.net.