In Jo's Yard - 5 Making a Plan to Convert My Yard

January 2018 I contact Amanda Martin of Grounded Solutions about doing the landscape design on my yard (www.groundedsol.com).  I am prepared to describe what I want from my yard, budget, time-line and so on.  Since Amanda is about an hour away from The Villages, we agree we will start with my sending her photos of the yard and the plat of the property so she can begin.  She will do something preliminary, then we will find a time when she can meet me here.  We will go from there.  I am excited – I have a starting point.

I take photos of my grass from every conceivable angle and vantage point.  It’s just grass.  I try to envision tall trees filled with birds and birdsong!  Colorful flower beds, lush frog fruit!  I’m not very good at it.  Well, that’s why I need a professional!  
These are my goals with respect to my yard:  

·       Create a calm natural oasis to enjoy walking around my property, sitting outside

·       Attract birds & wildlife – I enjoyed bird-watching up in Maryland 

·       Conserve water & decrease yard service; convert to drip irrigation

·       Shade the Florida room which faces south & has windows on three sides

·       I have a cat that used to be an outdoor cat up north, but now enjoys outside at the end of a leash

·       Very low maintenance - I have never had a yard or needed to do yardwork in the past. 

I included a list of plants I am interested in having in my yard.  Some I saw in other yards during the FNPS Garden Tours.  Some I learned about in the FNPS presentations. 

·       Flaming Red Maple Tree

·       Chickasaw Plum Tree

·       Weeping Yaupon Holly (maybe with a Passion Vine growing up it)

·       Some kind of Pine (since I live in Pine Hills)

·       Muhly Grass

·       Blue Curls

·       Scorpion Tail

·       Tropical Sage

·       Coral Honeysuckle

I also told Amanda that I’d appreciate any education she could include on how to maintain the landscape or add to it later. 

Five weeks later, Amanda comes to my house with blueprint size paper with a CAD drawing of my property and the planned landscape design.  It shows stylized plants, shrubs, trees everywhere.  There are lines drawn from the pictures to the margins where there are descriptions of each plant – common name, formal name, why it’s included (attracts pollinators, hummingbirds, provides shade, food, refuge).  In some places, she lists multiple plants with question marks.  For each of these, we look up the plant on my laptop computer and she tells me the pros and cons.  Then I decide – let’s go with this one or eliminate that one and she makes notations.  We’re making progress!