Mapping your garden

by Cynthia Kerson

At a recent workshop at Las Flores Learning Garden in Napa, the UC Master Gardeners provided information on rethinking your landscaping and garden design. Part of the workshop was a tour of the three gardens that have been planted to date – Low Maintenance, Pollinator, and California Native Garden. The low maintenance garden is heading into its second winter, and for the other two, this will be their first. The most interesting plant for me is manzanita because it's in all three gardens. The variety ‘Emerald Carpet' is in the pollinator and native gardens, and ‘Little Sur' in the low maintenance garden. There are a few other plants that are in two gardens. Asters and Buckwheat and many examples of sages/salvias. Take a look at the lists of plants in the gardens at https://napamg.ucanr.edu/DemoGarden/

Most of the plants in these three gardens thrive in the same conditions. They require part or full sun 4-8 hours a day, respectively, need little to very little water, and can tolerate most soils. Master Gardeners advocate for these types of gardens because they are the friendliest to our mediterranean climate and highly sustainable. Depending on your interests, you may want to create gardens with different needs and styles. A suggestion is for you to print a satellite image of your property and use it as a map. It will help you scale what you want to plant, and point out areas that are appropriate to plant cultural needs, as well as indicate areas that may conflict with a style you want.

Another tip is to take a picture every 2 hours starting close to dawn and ending at dusk from different vantage points to check the shade to sunlight ratios. I did this when we were planning our vineyard. One reason we bought our property was for the open field. When I took the pictures, I realized there were limits to where the vines should go, so we followed that plan and eliminated some rows where there was simply too much shade and/or droppings from pine trees, which may have changed the essence of the grapes. Another way to find out the sunlight coverage in your garden is to go out at midnight during a full moon and view your landscape.  Where you see the moonlight falling, that is where the sunlight will be falling in six months.If you're planning to do a landscape overhaul in spring, try to do this every few months during the winter monthss o you can grasp the sun cycles over the course of a few seasons. However, since most of us don't or can't plan that far ahead, be sure to anticipate changes over the year. Planting at a spot that gets a good amount of sun in the winter could be too much in the summer, or a building could block the sun in the winter when the plants need it the most. We made that mistake when we put our raised veggie beds in. They don't get as much sun in the winter as they do in the summer. If we'd built them just a few yards away, it would have been much better.

Napa Master Gardeners are available to answer garden questions by email: mastergardeners@countyofnapa.org. or phone at 707-253-4143.  Volunteers will get back to you after they research answers to your questions.

Visit our website: napamg.ucanr.edu to find answers to all of your horticultural questions.

Photo credits: Mel Kendall

Visit our UC Master Gardener Napa County website and look at the ‘Step by Step Garden Design' link: https://napamg.ucanr.edu/GardenDesign/ . In this resource you will find lots of information to help you with your garden redo process.  The most important thing to remember is to have fun!