Tips for Simplifying Your Landscape

The Cambria Garden Club was lucky to have Shana McCormick, a licensed landscaper here in Cambria, speak to us about how to simplify our landscape. Most of us are of an age that we would like to make gardening easier. I love flowering plants but deadheading is a huge chore and eventually I’d like to replace some of the little “backbreakers”. Shana had some suggestions for us that I’d like to share.

• When choosing new Mediterranean replacement plants, select varieties that are “compact”. These plants will need less pruning, will not become stringy, and will be easier to maintain.
• Shana said that we should be careful not to “overplant”. Read the labels and plant so that, when mature, plants will touch but not be crowded. She realizes that people want a mass of plantings, and she encouraged us to be patient. In a few years after planting, the spaced will meet our expectations.
• She likes to plant Australian plants like prostrate Grevillea that spread and need little care and the slender erect plant with pink flowers called Pimelea rosea. Bottlebrush she says (sneeze, sneeze) grows with little care and ferns are an easy-to-grow plant and a great fill in. She reminded us that the less plants we have, the less work to care for them so choosing ones that spread and fill in will reduce work.
• The popular Proteas, Leucadendrons, and Banksias should be fertilized only with blood meal. They do not like chemical fertilizer.
• Plant things like the Calla Lily in masses. They grow like crazy in Cambria.
• For sow bugs, earwigs, slugs/snails she recommended Monterey Sluggo Plus and Cooks Granular Insecticide to be used sparingly but consistently in the first months of planting.
• Shana recommends Grow Power Plus Granular for plants in the ground and Liquid Grow for potted plants.
• Deer, she says, are repelled by Liquid Fence, Deer Scram, and blood meal when alternated between the three of them.

I have heard Shana speak on several occasions and I’ve always learned something new. I find her to be passionate about gardening, “easy on the earth”, and willing to share her expertise. Thanks Shana.