I get asked about landscaping a lot and I always turn to our favorite mid-century landscaping expert, Jim Drzewiecki. Jim is an APLD, award-winning principal designer and the founder and owner of Ginkgo Leaf Studio where he and Hannah Paulson design beautiful landscapes for all kind of homes.
Now, not everyone can afford to hire a landscape designer for their project. Others just love gardening and planning for their own yard. And Ginkgo Leaf Studio usually has a waiting list.
So, this week Jim is back with his best tips for DIY landscape designers.
If you tune into the episode you’ll hear him start off with a great idea that I wanted to write down and then start putting into my own designs, immediately!
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Start with a plan
Even the experts start with a plan. In fact, Jim’s wife required one from him before he could on their yard. A plan can be created in whatever format works best for you – a drawing, notes on a photo, even a PowerPoint.
Let the house lead
Your house, even if it’s very modest, can tell you a lot about what to design. Look for a material (an accent not an all over material) to pick up. Or identify a shape, a detail, or an angle to repeat. A good design depends on context, so attention paid to the context will improve your design.
Pick one spot
You need a plan to start, but that plan does not have to be for your entire yard. Starting with one bed is a more manageable scale…and it allows you to adjust as you learn about your yard and your home.
Ginkgo Leaf Studio Projects
In Today’s Episode You’ll Hear:
- Why a plan is a must.
- How to let your house tell you how to design your landscape.
- When starting small is smart.
Listen Now On
Resources
- Check out all of Ginkgo Leaf Studios projects on their website.
- Find the right plants for your landscape using the Missouri Botanical Garden database.
- Get Ready to Remodel, my course that teaches you to DIY a great plan for your mid mod remodel!
- Want us to create your mid-century master plan? Apply here to get on my calendar for a Discovery Call!
- Need some targeted home advice? Schedule a 30-minute Zoom consult with me. We’ll dig into an issue or do a comprehensive mid century house audit.
And you can always…
- Join us in the Facebook Community for Mid Mod Remodel
- Find me on Instagram:@midmodmidwest
- Find the podcast on Instagram: @midmodremodelpodcast
Read the Full Episode Transcript
Della Hansmann 00:00
You love your mid-century house, hooray. How do you feel about the yard? Though, today I’m sharing advice you can start taking action on ASAP, not my own. This is coming from Jim Drzewiecki, landscape architect and owner of ginkgo leaf studio here in Wisconsin, and we’re talking about starting smart with mid-century landscaping.
Della Hansmann 00:17
If you haven’t done much in your yard, or you have questions or doubts about some of the choices you’ve already made, you will made, you will find helpful guidance on beginning well and setting yourself up for success, how to make smart, seasonal, easy and beautiful choices for improving the yard around a mid-century house begin with just one bed or go further.
Della Hansmann 00:35
Spoiler alert, Jim drops a couple of ideas today, so good that I’m going to immediately start applying them into how I design house, adjacent exterior space for my clients. Grab a notebook, pull up a notes file on your computer. Just pay attention, because this is going to get good.
Della Hansmann 00:48
Hey there. Welcome back to mid mom remodel. This is the show about updating MCM homes, helping you imagine mid-century home to your modern life. I’m your host. Della Hansmann, architect and mid-century ranch enthusiast. You’re listening to Episode 2205.
Della Hansmann 01:01
Before we get started, I’m curious about how you like to take in your mid mod content. Obviously, you’re not averse to a little podcast listening. That’s how you’re hearing me now. But depending on when and how you’re hunting your info, or how you’re sharing it, you might enjoy variety. Many of our podcast episodes are formatted for reading. You know, with your eyes on the mid mod Midwest blog, you’ll find a transcript of every recent episode there. And if you prefer video content, you might want to check out our relatively new YouTube channel.
Della Hansmann 01:29
Head over there and follow mid mod Midwest in order to get a YouTube link without video for each podcast episode, plus the occasional condensed advice video specifically for YouTube on a wide range of mid mod topics, if you find yourself, particularly in the position of being a big fan of the mid mountain model, podcast yourself. Ah, shucks. But wanting to recommend some of the ideas I share with a friend who prefers video or short form content, YouTube is a great place to start sharing.
Della Hansmann 01:54
The video of this convo with Jim will show up on YouTube pretty soon, too. If you want more of Jim as soon as soon as you’re done with this episode, just search for his name in the podcast platform you’re using, or head over to the show notes page for links and other super valuable conversations he and I have had over the last few years. Plus. Stay tuned. There’ll be a follow up conversation to this one shared later this fall. For now, here we go.
Della Hansmann 02:17
Okay, this is great. It’s so fun to be back here with you Jim. Jim Drzewiecki, landscape designer and owner of ginkgo leaf studio. You are my go to resource for outside of mid-century houses. What to do in the yard, how to think about plants, how to think about yards connecting to houses, which is a really important part of mid-century design. So it’s a pleasure to be here with you again. And, I know people always really enjoy these episodes.
Della Hansmann 02:45
I actually was thinking about some questions I’ve been getting from people who come to me asking about yard things in the interim since last we spoke, they’re often talking about sort of jumping off points where to get started. And I suspect that your answer will be similar to mine. But I was wondering if you had advice for someone who wanted to just do a beginner project start with one bed. Is there like a right place to begin, in the yard, or where would you jump in if you were trying to start small with making choices for landscaping around a mid-century house? Sure.
Jim Drzewiecki 03:20
Well, and as always, it’s a pleasure to be back with you. I really enjoy having these conversations with a like-minded mid-century fan, yeah. And we have this, you know, small sphere of people. You’ve interviewed Aylin before and others, and I enjoy listening to those podcasts, too. So I’m happy to be back. I think there are great small projects for a homeowner to tackle.
Jim Drzewiecki 03:50
My favorite idea about maybe adding a new bed somewhere, a new planting area somewhere. And I don’t think people think about this a lot, but at least here in the Midwest, it’s kind of sad maybe how much time we are spending living in our houses versus being outside. Yeah. So something I always think about is the view outside of a window. Oh, yeah. And so many mid-century homes have these big picture windows, so I might think about, and maybe it’s in the middle of the front yard, but a garden that’s specifically for the view from inside the house.
Della Hansmann 04:33
That’s, you know, I don’t know why I’m so surprised by that, but I also when if I was to think, what would I do for landscaping? Well, first I would ask you, but if I couldn’t, I would probably start with a picture of the house from the road and then think about what it looks like from the curb. But you’re right. We you’re the person who’s inside your house the most it’s your yard. Why wouldn’t you think about your experience of looking out,
Jim Drzewiecki 04:56
Right and similarly, if someone said. Uh, we’d like to add a fire pit area, but we don’t know where, where to place it. I always think it’s truly a first world problem when we think, oh my gosh, I have to walk 50 feet out into my yard to get to my fire pit. But one of my favorite things to do, and I think it ties back to the architecture of the house. Let’s play picture window idea again. We take the center line of that window and we pull it out into the yard, and that might be where I center the fire pit area. Yeah, not only are you giving a focal point from the view inside the house out. But if you get yourself a really cool fire pit, well, now it’s almost a sculpture to look at even when there’s not a fire in it.
Della Hansmann 05:52
Yeah, that’s an excellent way to think about it. And I when I’m thinking about the spaces right adjacent to a house, a deck or a patio, I’m often thinking about how the proportions of the room can be sort of mirrored outside. If we’ve got a long rectangular living room, maybe we create a similar space outside that kind of squares off with the with the wall of a house in the middle, for sure.
Della Hansmann 06:13
But it does often sort of just expand the house outside of itself a little bit in a bubble, rather than incorporating the whole yard. So you’re right. People often want their grill right outside the kitchen door. But if you’re thinking about an evening settling in the dark around a fire experience, maybe that should be you want to go for a little walk in your yard and giving it a view. So you look at it, you see it, and you want to go out to there is a great it’s as good a reason as I need to put it in one place.
Jim Drzewiecki 06:41
See and I didn’t think of that aspect. So I’m going to steal that idea from you, that when you look out your window and see the fire pit area, maybe you say to yourself, let’s have a fire tonight,
Della Hansmann 06:54
right? It’s too private. You will forget about it,
Jim Drzewiecki 06:57
right? I think people do that sometimes with their vegetable gardens, if they place them too far out of the way, they’re not on top of mind, and you either forget to water, you forget to weed, you end up with, you know, three foot long zucchinis because you haven’t Been out in your garden in a while.
Della Hansmann 07:20
Yeah.
Jim Drzewiecki 07:20
But I think creating an outdoor space that is a destination, even if it’s just hanging that space off the edge of the patio, it doesn’t have to be out in the backyard, but if it’s off the edge of your current patio, that can make it feel like that helps to make it feel like it’s a separate space.
Della Hansmann 07:45
Yeah, yeah, it’s a I think that’s a really good question. And I probably default, as much as any other designer to thinking in plan a lot when I’m when I’m citing things, but thinking about your view lines from the house is really logical and yet, though not the way we necessarily gravitate to things, and line of sight is really important for anything you want to do in your daily life.
Della Hansmann 08:10
I mean, I struggle with a little bit of the sort of designer brain, maybe slash ADHD distraction. If I’m always doing the thing that’s in front of me, and I will absolutely neglect parts of my yard I can’t see. I have a I have a seating arrangement of deck chairs that I actually don’t use, that I keep visible from my house, because the best place to hang a hammock, which I do use, is out of sight of all of my windows. See the deck chairs. I want to go sit in my hammock, and then I do.
Jim Drzewiecki 08:37
Well. So by association,
Della Hansmann 08:41
By association. place to sit outside, even though, realistically, I literally never sit in them. I’ve let the cushions become unpleasant. But the hammock is there, and it’s hiding just out of sight around the corner by the best tree.
Jim Drzewiecki 08:55
Yeah, and going back to centering on a view you and I have talked about this before, striking lines off of a mid-century house. We’ve called them lines of force. It’s not just the center line of a window. It might be the corner; it might be the middle of the chimney. Those are these underlying guidelines that I feel like to us, they’re so obvious, yeah, and they make our lives easier as designers, but it’s kind of the house is telling you where this thing should be, whether it’s a plant bed, whether it’s another outdoor space.
Jim Drzewiecki 09:41
You know, listen to the house. And of course, since the whole mantra of mid-century design is the blurring of inside and outside, that’s yet another reason to let the house kind of guide you as to where things should be placed,
Della Hansmann 09:58
Right, let the shapes, let the windows, let the change in material, a difference in the overhang of the roofline, let those things direct all of those in there. Yeah, absolutely. That’s okay. Well, this isn’t actually the direction I thought we were gonna go with this conversation, but I love it, and I think it’s incredibly useful.
Della Hansmann 10:17
When you’re thinking of a small project, it’s sometimes kind of a one off. Where can I put a new bed? Where can I put a seating area, a feature? And what to do is maybe the first question. But then, where does it go? You can’t successfully execute a plan unless you know where it’s going to happen
Jim Drzewiecki 10:34
Right? And it might even be chicken and egg a little bit. I want a space. Where does it go, or where is it going to go before I even really decide what it’s going to become? Yeah, I still think though the best after you’ve figured that first step out, sketch something, put something on paper, because truly just winging it.
Jim Drzewiecki 11:04
I hate to say this, but a design professional like you or I, we can get away with it because we, we maybe have that, you know, innate sense in our in our brains. But truth be told, when my wife and I moved into our second house, she told me, You are not winging this one. And she said, I want to see an actual plan before you do anything. And even though we’ve done it in phases after the front yard was done, she wouldn’t let me touch the backyard until she saw a plan first.
Della Hansmann 11:39
Well, that actually gets to another we are splitting out functions of the same brain, or possibly we’re solving the problems that we encounter universally over and over again. Because I think it’s one of the best, one of the best arguments for design is that it helps you yourself plan ahead. But another really important part of putting your ideas on paper and being clear about them is that it helps that it helps partner agreement and buy in.
Della Hansmann 12:06
And often there’s, I mean, I think it’s maybe even more true with garden things. If there’s one person who’s got a green thumb and like spending time in the yard and another person who just wants to enjoy the esthetic of it, that doesn’t mean the other person doesn’t get a say. But if they don’t have a moment of shared vision, if you don’t put it on paper so your wife can check it out and talk to you about it, she won’t know what’s gonna happen until it’s done. And I think that happens, and I see that with my clients as well too. There’s often someone who was taking point. They’re more interested and more engaged in the process at first, but it’s easy for that person to just make a lot of plans and get them in motion, and maybe that.
Della Hansmann 12:43
Maybe then, I don’t know what’s worse, if it’s all done and someone’s unhappy with the results, or if you get to the almost execution moment and someone’s like, timeout, wait, what are we doing? No, I don’t agree to that, but everything has been paid for and planned for, and that can be really chaotic. So the earlier in a design process, or the early in the process of doing anything you can get everyone agreed that’s really important,
Jim Drzewiecki 13:05
Yeah, for sure. I mean, it can be as simple as, oh, I didn’t know you were going to put a tree there, if it had been on paper that that could have been a discussion that was had before the tree was sitting there, you know, ready to be planted.
Della Hansmann 13:21
with a drying root ball. Yeah.
Jim Drzewiecki 13:22
The whole reason we encourage couples to fill out our design questionnaire together is so that I don’t show up at the first design meeting and I need to put on my black and white striped shirt to be referee.
Jim Drzewiecki 13:40
Because I’ve literally had a client. The wife said, I thought we were doing a deck, and the husband said, No, I thought we were doing a patio. And that’s, yeah, that’s a horrible for me to be in. And, you know, luckily, I’m there to maybe weigh the pros and cons of both of those ideas, but to think it through, buy in from each person who’s involved.
Jim Drzewiecki 14:14
Maybe, you know, you both want a tree, but one of you thinks it should be on the right side of the patio and the other things that should be on the left side, well, better to figure that out on paper. Yeah, then someone puts it in the ground, and the other person looks out the window and says, What?
Della Hansmann 14:35
Yeah, no, that’s, I think everyone who’s ever worked in anything residential has probably encountered surprise spousal disagreement on site before, and I really try hard not to be a couples counselor, but, you know, it’s a little inevitable. The referee shirt, that’s a that’s a good metaphor, but I agree.
Della Hansmann 14:55
I think the best remedy for that I’ve ever discovered is to get everybody to agree up front as close to the beginning of the process as possible. What are we trying to do? And then what are we doing? What does it look like? And then we all like it. Okay, good. We can go from there and you experience it in your own life. I don’t have to share the decisions in my house with a partner, but I also second guess myself if I haven’t thought things through well enough, and that sort of dive in enthusiastically with the energy of the moment and then regret it afterwards, is also a byproduct of not having planned even a little bit properly first.
Della Hansmann 15:33
Before we were talking on the recording, you mentioned the sort of Memorial Day weekend mistake. I wondered if you’d elaborate on that one a little bit?
Jim Drzewiecki 15:42
Sure. I think it’s very common in the Midwest. I would guess for sure. I’ve seen it in Wisconsin, having lived here my entire life. But we’re so happy to feel that summer is coming, that Memorial Day week, and no lie is when all the garden centers are arguably the busiest, they’ve been up until that point.
Della Hansmann 16:05
and they know it, and they’re planning for it, right?
Jim Drzewiecki 16:07
And now what happens is the plants are blooming Memorial Day weekend, and they look amazing. That’s when all the color is there. And as you said, everything’s flowering. Well, there may be other perennials off to the side that aren’t flowering, and people will, you know, ignore them likely, and only grab everything that looks great at that moment. And while, when you get home and you put them in the ground, your yard is going to look great for a few weeks.
Jim Drzewiecki 16:41
But after that, and more importantly, maybe by mid-July, you’re going to look out your window and say, oh my gosh, we have no flowers in our yard anymore. What happened? And it’s simply because you weren’t thinking about the seasonality, you got sucked into buying only the plants that looked really pretty at that time.
Jim Drzewiecki 17:03
And Hannah, you know, really brought that up. It will take us in the discussion of how we choose plants, but really thinking about the seasons. It’s one of my favorite things about designing projects in the Midwest is that we get all four seasons to play with.
Della Hansmann 17:24
Yeah, really do. They’re different in each,
Jim Drzewiecki 17:27
Right? I mean, we’ve done a few projects in Arizona, we’ve done two projects in California, and even project in Dallas. And of course, working with those plant palettes was super fun, but I visited one of our Arizona projects, and their spring means the cacti are blooming. But other than that, there isn’t much really visible seasonality. The rest of the year, most of their trees don’t lose their leaves, or the leaves don’t even change color.
Jim Drzewiecki 18:01
But those are all the fun things we can think about here. And if, if, if you think it through, and it might just mean, you know, doing some Google research. If you’re a homeowner and you want to figure this out on your own, you’re simply going to look for, you know, in Wisconsin, zone five spring perennials, zone five summer perennials, zone five fall perennials.
Jim Drzewiecki 18:27
And here we have two or three perennials that are go to that actually bloom in the fall when you think your garden is done, we have these little surprise plants we like to put in our designs, because all of a sudden you think everything’s winding down, school is starting. And wait a minute, there’s a plant that just started blooming in this shade garden. What’s that?
Della Hansmann 18:56
That is really nice and thinking about what’s going to start early too, to sort of give you that that early feeling of joy also so important. I think that’s my instincts around plants are less organized than yours, but I was noticing this summer, I made that guilty. I made that classic mistake myself. I did the prairie bed in front of my house by asking my mom what I saw around me that was pretty in the fall. And go figure, nothing in that bed blooms until July at the earliest. Looks great all through the fall, and then it kind of looks like dead weeds all winter.
Della Hansmann 19:36
But that’s a separate problem. But I was doing it. I was thinking about solving this problem a little more instinctively. This summer, I was walking instinctively. This summer, I was walking around thinking my yard didn’t look like anything, and noticing a couple of other people’s yards who had planned better than me, and saying, what’s that thing that’s pretty right now, okay, I’m gonna take a picture of it.
Della Hansmann 19:53
I’m gonna Google image search that and see if that’s something I should add to my yard. But I don’t know what the right time to do that. Is, if I want to put in like alliums, that’s a bulb thing. So I’ve got a plan now, not next May, to make those come up.
Jim Drzewiecki 20:08
Yeah. I mean, just to prove that I’m not infallible either. I was looking at one of the beds in our backyard, off of our patio. It’s, it’s a bed I had to put out in the lawn around a couple of our septic caps to them. And I just happened to notice that only two plants were blooming in it in early August, and there should have been a third blooming, but it was not doing well, and it may have been getting too much sun. It was an Astilbe, which really should be in a shade garden. But I thought where I had it, it would do fine, but it wasn’t.
Jim Drzewiecki 20:49
And so I thought I’ve got to replace these, a still be with something else. Well, I don’t know if my wife saw me standing in the backyard staring at this bed, but one evening, she says to me, how come we don’t have a lot of things blooming in that bed right now? And I said out, well, aha. First of all, I already figured that out, and here’s one of the reasons why. But and homeowners can do this, I went through my you know, plant library in my head.
Jim Drzewiecki 21:23
And I can even look in other places in my yard and say, Oh, well, the monardas are blooming right now. Bee balm, I could put that in this bed. My cone flowers are all blooming right now. I could add more cone flower if I wanted to. Hyssop is blooming right now. But I was really curious about what else I might add to that mix. So here’s what a homeowner can do. It’s a repeat of the Memorial Day weekend. You go to the garden center now and you see what might be blooming, and buy a few of those things.
Jim Drzewiecki 21:58
Now, the caveat to this. And this is why I would say this idea of maybe doing a late summer project in your yard, there’s there is a problem with that. From a plant availability standpoint, I was at a Stein garden center in the middle of July, and almost all their perennials were already gone. And even the more serious garden centers, I’m finding that once they sell out of something, they’re not restocking.
Della Hansmann 22:31
Interesting.
Jim Drzewiecki 22:32
So, if you want to do a later summer project, or even in the fall, and fall can be a great time to put plants in. Be aware that your selection may not be that great, and even if you find a plant that was on your list, they may not look so great. You know, you might be getting the left behind scraps that maybe you say, well, we’re not going to find everything we wanted. Let’s just wait till spring to put these plants in, when we’re going to have a much better choice of plants.
Della Hansmann 23:10
So realistically, from just a garden center logistic perspective, regardless of when things are going to bloom, you’re going to get better specimens, and you’re more likely to find them locally if you go in spring,
Jim Drzewiecki 23:20
I think so. Now that being said, I’ve seen Steins bring plants in this time of year because they know they are blooming now, but there’s a garden center near my office that once they’re out, they’re out, and then even when I was there looking for a specific shrub, I needed three, they had one.
Jim Drzewiecki 23:46
And I specifically asked, Are you getting more? And she said, Nope, that’s it. So then I went to a second Garden Center, and I found two more there, and I got my three. But plant availability this time of year, especially the spring blooming plants, could be absolutely zero this time of year, because they were all sold at the beginning of the season.
Della Hansmann 24:11
When they were looking pretty. Yeah, they were looking pretty, right? So there’s a certain amount of, well, I mean, I would assume any yard work really is the long game. You can try to do something to fix a problem right now. You can certainly plant a pretty flower that’s in bloom.
Della Hansmann 24:15
But if you really want a yard that’s going to flourish and work well in every season over time, you’re probably even you are tweaking your own yard. But are there other projects? I mean, we started by talking about a fire pit. Maybe it’s better to think about a yard project that’s not as plant based, if you’re looking for a fall project and then leave planting to the spring. Or do you think that’s Do you think that seems true?
Jim Drzewiecki 24:50
Oh yeah, we’ve had quite a few projects where we’re designing them in the middle of summer, just because of contractor’s schedule. Until they’re not going to get installed until the fall. And there is a threshold of how late you want to put plants in the ground. You can put woody plants in, really, almost until the ground freezes. So those are your shrubs and your evergreens and your trees.
Jim Drzewiecki 25:18
But I have started to find that maybe after October 1 you may not want to put perennials in the ground anymore if they don’t really and especially smaller ones, smaller pot sized plants, they don’t have enough time to set their roots, you run the risk of frost heave, actually pushing them out of the ground during the winter and when, when the snow is gone in the spring, you have a bunch of dead plants.
Jim Drzewiecki 25:50
I’ve even literally seen an ornamental grass that was in a gallon pot. So it should have been okay, but you could see the soil sticking out of the ground that good two inches in the shape of the pot. So that whole root ball around that plant literally just slid out of the ground two inches from frost heave.
Della Hansmann 26:14
Not getting the water and the soil contact that it was looking for.
Jim Drzewiecki 26:16
And needless to say, that that grass died. So there is a point where you probably shouldn’t be planting the herbaceous perennials.
Della Hansmann 26:21
Fair enough. Well, interesting. I think that. I think that it’s, you know, planning your design ahead, thinking in this thinking of beyond the season you’re in is always a necessity for a good project. But it’s also useful to think that like there are times when you can, within reason, pop by the garden store and get enthusiastic about a bunch of things, but this, you know, at the later we get in the air that might not even be a viable way to think about making changes in your garden.
Jim Drzewiecki 26:59
No, not plant wise, but hardscape wise. As long as the ground is not frozen, you can be digging in the ground and putting down a gravel base for a patio space or a fire pit area. There’s a plus, I think, to doing hardscape related projects in the fall, because if you say, Oh no, we’ll get to it in the spring.
Jim Drzewiecki 27:23
Well, you know, we never know when spring will actually come number one, and once it’s here, we don’t know how good or bad the weather is actually going to be. We have a very rainy spring after the snow melt that happened, you might not be able to dig in the soil until June. We’ve had whole year schedules slide backwards because the landscape contractors were not able to start in late April or early May, due to the ground just simply being too wet.
Della Hansmann 28:01
Yeah. So in construction with if you’re pouring foundation first, or if you’re digging out form foundation, you know that first, that last frost date and how wet it is can have a really big impact on getting things started.
Jim Drzewiecki 28:15
Yeah. So anytime you can plan ahead and do the hardscapes now while the ground is workable, versus waiting till spring. And maybe you’re kind of rolling the dice on that, so I kind of like hardscapes in the fall and on the same project, the plantings just follow in the spring.
Della Hansmann 28:42
Oh, I like that a lot from a DI wires perspective. Also, I would say there’s sometimes there’s a little bit of a lag in your impulse to get outside in the spring, like the same sort of mid 30s day that you in the fall, you’d be like, I better make the most of it. I’m in the I’m in the mode of getting everything done at the end of the year in the spring.
Della Hansmann 29:04
You might not really notice when it’s below freezing or when it’s above and sort of feel like, oh, we also have an impulse to get outside and put our shorts on in Wisconsin, of course. But I think I personally have a lag in my mental load of house projects, and I tend to sort of linger on inside projects into the spring for some reason, until it gets to be mowing and planting season, at which point things getting out of control drives me out to my yard, but, but I think that’s a good impulse to get to think about sort of extend however much luck we have in the fall with good working Outside season, putting it into hardscaping and non-planting things so you’re ready to plant when you can in spring, right? Fabulous.
Della Hansmann 29:48
Well, I think this is really hopefully an inspiration for anybody who’s listening to this and thinking, Oh, I did want to do a few more things in my yard this year. They might roll the dice and get lucky at the garden center. Partner, they should certainly do a little bit of putting their ideas on paper, so their partner or spouse can weigh in, share their opinions, make sure everyone’s on the same page, and maybe default to less plant based projects and more organizational. Bed creation, hardscaping, moving things around.
Jim Drzewiecki 30:22
Yeah, I think fall once you’ve got your ideas on paper, and I love that someone might be excited and want to do a late summer, fall project. But you know, if you just do that mental pause and say to yourself. Well, we’ve figured out what we want to do. Let’s do it in the right order. You can do the prep work now and do your removals now. You could strip the sod where you want a plant bed. You’re just not going to plant it yet.
Jim Drzewiecki 30:59
Hannah’s advice was, start small. If you’re going to DIY your whole yard with plantings, I’d start with just one bed. And, you know, make sure you’re a green thumb or not, because you might it’s funny, you know, you can have this idea of what you want to tackle. And you do that first bed, and once you find out all of it goes into it, you might take a step back and say, You know what? The next time we do something like this, we’re actually going to hire someone.
Della Hansmann 31:37
That’s true of inside DIY projects too,
Jim Drzewiecki 31:40
For sure, and though and the factors that go into that age. You know, I’d rather hire 225 year olds to do some grunt work for me, versus me doing it. They have the right tools. I couldn’t possibly have the arsenal of equipment and tools that someone who does it daily would have, yeah, so those are factors time. You know, what is your time worth? Versus paying someone?
Jim Drzewiecki 32:12
I pay someone to mulch my gardens now, instead of doing it ourselves, and that means I can leave for work in the morning to an unmulched yard, and when I get home at the end of the day, it’s mulched, instead of watching that mulch pile go slowly down over four weeks, because I’m taking it one wheel, barrel at A time, those to me are all, you know, I DIY stuff myself, but I always weigh those other factors into what makes sense for me to tackle myself, and what shouldn’t I tackle myself?
Jim Drzewiecki 32:56
And I’ve even paid someone to do the bed prep, which means stripping the grass, putting in the edging, tilling the soil. Well, then I have the easy part, because I’m, I’m digging in this soft, rich, newly tilled soil, and it’s super easy to put plants in ground like that, versus hard, you know, dry clay, because I was get these plants in the ground.
Della Hansmann 33:27
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, you’re, you’re telling me all about the first bed project I did on this yard and all the things that went wrong with it. This is great, well, and I also think too, it’s, this is so similar to inside DIY projects, you’re going to find your own preferences. I know people who actually do like hanging drywall. They find it fun. I have hung drywall in my life, and I will never again in my life hang drywall.
Della Hansmann 33:52
So there are there are things in the process of taking care of the yard that you’re going to find that you like to do, that you find meditative, that you enjoy as a workout. And then there are other things, if you’re like, well, that’s just a waste of my time and saps my energy to finish a project that I would otherwise have enjoyed. So I think that start small and try all the steps yourself once lets you take it all for a test spin.
Della Hansmann 34:16
You learn from a few mistakes. I started with my most prominent spot, right at the front of my house. I might advise someone else to do if you know you have a brown thumb, maybe start in the backyard. Just a thought. But yeah, I think that’s, that’s really useful advice,
Jim Drzewiecki 34:35
Starting small. You mentioned, you know, learning from your mistakes. If you start small, maybe you’re only putting a dozen perennials in and a few shrubs. And if you’re bad at it, or you don’t have a green thumb, well, you haven’t made a major investment, let’s say. But you know to sketch up your whole front yard and then go out. Out and spend 1000s of dollars on plants and have the same mistakes happen is obviously going to be a much bigger deal.
Della Hansmann 35:09
Yeah
Jim Drzewiecki 35:10
One of the things we think about, its simple advice, but it’s right plant, right place, that takes us down that road of you know, site conditions, sun, shade, wind, wet, dry, all those things that we use as our starting point for choosing plants. If you don’t think about those things, you’re going to put a sun perennial in a shade bed, and then wonder why it struggled.
Della Hansmann 35:46
Yeah. So that comes back to, you know, probably planning on paper, probably planning in plan, thinking about shade angles, making notes on how the sun moved through your yard in the day and the year, planning ahead again, but again, you’re right. Start small, and any error you make is easy to correct or absorb or replace, and it doesn’t .
Jim Drzewiecki 36:10
It amplifies. That’s, for sure,
Della Hansmann 36:12
absolutely marvelous. Well, this is kind of leading us into the very next thing I want to talk to you about, which I think is the subject for our next chat. I’ll tease that lightly here, which is later in the season. I’d love to talk to you about thinking, not just through the seasons, but specifically thinking about the end of the season, thinking about winter, and what you can do for your yard to make it get it ready for winter and help it look good all winter.
Della Hansmann 36:37
But for now, I just want to say thank you for coming back on and sharing such good, actionable advice. I think people who are experienced in working with their yards will probably find a few good ideas today, and hopefully people who have not played around in their yard or their mid-century house will feel inspired to take a first step.
Jim Drzewiecki 36:55
Yeah, I hope so.
Della Hansmann 36:57
Excellent. All right, we’ll see you next time.
Jim Drzewiecki 36:58
Okay
Della Hansmann 37:02
That’s it for today. I hope this has left you feeling very excited to put a few new ideas into practice this fall, or to start workshopping a plan for next spring. If you are looking for Jim’s personal input into your yard, get in touch with him ASAP, because he’s got a months long waiting list pretty much all the time. If you’re ever looking for design advice from me and mid mod midwest, pop over to the website for one of the several ways for us to work together.
Della Hansmann 37:26
Show notes for today’s episode are at mid mod midwest.com/ 2205 next week, we’ll be digging into how to add accessibility to a mid-century home remodel, how to plan for a family member with limited mobility, make your house more host ready for someone needing accessible accommodations, or just get set to age in place in your own home for as long as you can.
Della Hansmann 37:47
I’m really excited about this one, and it’s something that comes up a lot in my mid-century master plans. So gather up your questions and comments about that, and we will talk about it next week.