Plants such as Ligularia need loads of moisture. To truly enjoy these types of plants you must keep soil moist at all times. So to plant these in a happy spot, average garden soil (50/50 peat-topsoil mix) must have good composted humus worked in and layed on top as a mulch. This holds water and coolness where it is needed for roots to stay wet enough. Another neat trick I have seen that might aid in keeping these hungry types lush would be a water reservoir or two at their bases. Using an inverted 20 oz. pop bottle with cap on and bottom cut off. Then 3/4 of way up bottle poke a small hole every inch. The water in reservoir only leaks out when water in soil is depleated. So it slowly oozes moisture where it is needed. Refilling it would depend on heat index and amount of rainfall or irrigation in a given spot. To keep soil from filling bottle, a peice of landscape fabric, a hunk of old polyester fabric, or even foot of an old nylon stocking, rubber banded in place allows moisture in while keeping most of dirt from washing into your reservoir.

If tulip bulbs are rotting in an area due to heavy spring and fall moisture a more aggressive drain system is needed that will carry water down and out more quickly. Water runs down hill, so an incline to your drain bed is needed. The more water, more layers of decreasing size fill is needed and deeper one must go to drain area. BEWARE! Sometimes you can over do drainge and even daily watering will not keep things moist enough! If that problem occurs, excavate and change your "recipe" to lessen sharpness of draining. As with all things, experience is good guidance as to what is enough and what is too much. Heavy water problems can be solved with this system. The bigger area, bigger your drain field. Using successive layers of 1-2" roofing stone, pea gravel, coarse sand and topsoil or garden soil. Some drains go down a whole foot or more. The layered field can also be used with slotted tile pipe in a sock, attatched to solid pipe in some severe situations. A one to two inch decline over many feet can take a "pond" in your lawn or garden out to woods or curb; to an area that it is no longer a detriment to whatever you are trying to grow in that spot. This same system was used repeatedly over coarse of decades by my father who specialized in "corrective drainage" while in landscape contracting field in. We employed it in many planting areas of customers yards with much greater success of what we could grow in any given customer's yard. (It was also used to correct basement flooding.) This will widen choices of what you can grow together under "normal" garden conditions quite a bit, no matter what your limitations are at moment.

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So there I stand with this super successful professional, a man of high learning, who wants to know how we can coax this spent row of 5 foot tall trunks and stems along his walk into growing more hair in bottoms. He thinks that fertilizer cures all of man’s cruelty. (Remember that you must see things through eye of plant?) How am I to explain this to this person! My professional self developed a cunning approach. “A landscape has a life expectancy of about 20 years. Yours seems to be about 5 years overdue for replanting.” If this was not enough to convince customer, I would go on to ask how long wallpaper in their kitchen had hung there. Explaining that redecorating outdoors was just as necessary to variety in life than it was to keep up to date with their interior décor. But they wanted back what they had before it turned into bare branches! The issue of certain control may very well be answer.

Now I am not against hedges. I am not anti-evergreen. Pruning, thinning and shaping is of definite necessity to full and lovely shrubs and even some trees. Even every other aspect of life we look for right thing to accomplish task, but when it comes to plants we place in our yards we seem to fall short in search for proper element. Proper planning should be first consideration and whacking could become almost obsolete. It is good to know that plant breeders are busily developing new Arborvitaes and Yews that will stay in a nice little meatball shape without whacking. News that will lessen maintenance you must forfeit your weekend to perform, alleviate need to butcher bushes and make all hedge trimmer companies hold their breath over next year’s third quarter earnings.

As for aspect of proper planning vs. constant replacement, if space is 30 inches wide, then it would be best to consider installing only those shrubs that will never exceed 4 foot in width. Remember, a little shaping is good and a harsh whacking is lowering life expectancy of elements in your landscape. Proper planning is one of best tools in creating a low maintenance planting.

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