The Zero-Skill Gardener’s Guide to Backyard Landscaping

A well-landscaped backyard makes you want to spend more time outside and feel proud about inviting guests over to enjoy the area, too. Many people without landscaping experience believe that creating a beautiful backyard is outside their capabilities. Fortunately, you can get lovely results by being willing to learn and remaining patient. How should you start?

Consider Your Goals

Begin by determining what you want to achieve with the landscaping efforts. People frequently enhance the curb appeal of their homes, while others aim to support local sustainability by choosing plants to accommodate wildlife. Turning part of the area into a garden with edible items is another popular choice, especially as homeowners seek practical ways to cope with rising grocery costs.

As you ponder the possibilities, consider related aspects, such as your budget and the amount of time you can dedicate to maintaining the backyard during a typical week. Think about whether you will do everything yourself or occasionally hire professionals to help.

Prioritize Native Plants

The huge assortments of products at many garden centers can feel overwhelming, especially as you study the various colors, textures, and other attributes of the products offered. How should you determine which will thrive in your backyard? One of the best starting points is to focus on native plants. They naturally require less care than their counterparts due to their adaptation to the surroundings.

Some amateur gardeners have taken to online forums to warn others that many major retailers sell invasive plants to consumers who are unfamiliar with the potential consequences of planting them in their backyards. You can avoid that issue by spending some time researching the native plants that will thrive in your area and focusing on those during shopping trips. Some specialty retailers have dedicated sections, and venues such as college campuses periodically host native plant sales.

Incorporate Hardscaping Features

Hardscaping involves adding permanent elements to your backyard, such as statues, stepping stones, fountains, and bricks. This approach is an easy way to define different areas of the garden by creating visual separation. It also reduces the amount of grass for you to mow.

Permeable pathways are excellent options for reducing foot traffic on your lawn by directing people to designated walking areas. They increase backyard resilience by making water seep into the ground, reducing soil compaction. If your area gets a lot of rain, these options can prevent flooding.

Aerate the Lawn

Lawn aeration is a seasonal task that facilitates the green, lush grass that is the foundation of a beautiful backyard. It involves using a mechanical aerator to remove dirt plugs from the turf.  Although many people initially achieve good results with mowing and watering alone, aeration supplements those efforts by encouraging the grass to grow deeper roots, making it more tolerant of heat and drought and increasing its disease resistance. 

Checking if your lawn needs aeration is as easy as cutting a six-inch-deep cross-section into it. 

Then, check to see if the thatch layer — composed of organic debris such as grass clippings — is more than a half-inch thick. That’s a sign to aerate, and you should also do it if the roots only extend 1 to 2 inches into the soil.

Conduct a Soil Test

Plants need many essential nutrients to grow. Conducting a soil test is a reliable way to check for their presence and availability, providing the necessary information to make adjustments as required. Numerous factors influence the composition, including the pH level, microbial activity, and vegetation. Garden centers sell soil test kits, and using them is the most convenient approach for someone with no experience.

Experts recommend testing the soil every two to four years, and ideally in the autumn. Doing it then gives you more time to think about making strategic changes for better soil health by the time spring arrives.

Select Plants to Match the Light Levels

You’ve probably seen labels and soil cards that mention the amount of sunlight a plant needs. Instead of giving a numerical range to indicate the hours, the information typically uses phrases such as “partial sun.”  Before getting into the details, become more familiar with your backyard and the amount of sunlight it receives by examining it every half hour or so for at least a week. Take notes about how often the sun bathes a particular area or whether that part of your yard remains shaded. 

If a plant requires full sun, it needs six to eight hours of sunlight daily, mostly occurring between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. Then, if a plant’s details call for partial sun or partial shade, those are interchangeable terms indicating four to six hours of sun per day, and preferably during the cooler hours of the morning. Another thing to note is that if a plant requires partial shade, that means it needs protection from the most intense midday heat.

Conquer Challenging Conditions With Rock Gardens

Your backyard may have features such as slopes, poor soil quality or excessive dryness. Those may initially seem like insurmountable challenges, especially for a beginning landscaper. You can work with those characteristics by creating a rock garden. They let you recreate an alpine environment that includes loose rocks, wildflowers, and low-growing vegetation.

All you need to start is a small open area, ideally on an east-facing slope with rocky soil. Create a mixture that contains one-third each of soil, small rocks, and sand or another material to promote good drainage. After building that base, you can add larger rocks and arrange them as desired. Finally, include plants suited for dry conditions. You won’t need to fertilize them because they’ll get nutrients from the rocks.

Work Within Your Means

Besides considering these tips, always try to keep backyard gardening fun by staying mindful of your budget, time, and the other activities that fill your life. Even if you have a hectic schedule, it’s easy to make gradual but meaningful impacts by focusing on the improvements most accessible to you.

This article is part of the HOGDigest editorial series.
Originally written by [Jane Marsh] and republished with permission.

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