Earlier this week, I went out for my first visit to a new landscape project…

New landscape project

As you can see, they aren’t quite ready for me to step into this project.

This church had to have all of its stucco redone.

Many of the plants were removed, but some are still intact.

New landscape project

Today, I went around and tagged plants (with red paint) that will need to be removed since I won’t be using them in the new design.

The reasons for this is that the members want more color near the church building – AND they want plants to be blooming in winter when most of the members are here.  (Many spend their summers in cooler places – sometimes, I wish that I could 😉  

Of course, I didn’t recommend removing all of the plants.

Believe it or not, those round, green shrubs are actually trees.  I’ll recommend letting them grow up into trees.

**When designing an existing landscape, I try to keep at least a few of the plants present, if not more.  The reason for this is that a brand-new landscape looks quite sparse for the first few years until the new plants grow a bit.

Keeping some of the existing plants helps to alleviate the sparseness of a new landscape.  Besides, I don’t like pulling out plants that can still benefit the landscape.

Once the scaffolding comes down, I will be back after Christmas.

I’ll keep you updated as my latest project progresses, including what plants I select and the reasons why.

Plant Palette For New Landscape: Perennials and Succulents