Landscaping: Do it yourself calling in a professional
A particular sunny, 90-degree summer day will always seem like yesterday, even though 11 years have come and gone.
I will never forget helping my father, the owner of a landscaping business in Butler County, carefully construct a retaining wall to go around a five-foot-deep pool at the tender age of 12.
With three rows completed, and what felt about five pounds lost only a few minutes after noon, three kids came and jumped into the pool only the width of a sidewalk away.
It was tough pill to swallow while my day was spent lifting pallets upon pallets of blocks more than half my weight.
Now, 11 years later and proudly a recent homebuyer myself, I can understand why my dad had me out there helping him.
It was first, to instill a hardworking discipline, which was thoroughly ingrained during the longer summer days of helping cut grass, spread mulch or the back-wrenching labor of building retaining walls for us to do all the hard work and for others to enjoy.
Talk about a smack of reality of doing all that work and not seeing it the next day or enjoying for the next 10 years.
The other reason, which my dad won’t willingly admit to this day, was so he didn’t have to lift each individual block himself.
But proudly tagged with the “homeowner” label, in a house predominantly finished other than what can nicely be considered a blank canvas on the outside, it is allowing me to fulfill a dream of actually doing the work and being able to reap the rewards.
While wanting to get everything done at once, reality strikes back – similar to my 12-year-old self stacking those retaining wall blocks and knowing that’s not possible.
It’s a matter of just making sure everything is done correctly, both in the work that is done and the money it takes to get it completed; trying to do everything in my power to do that labor myself.
The biggest importance for homeowners, including myself, is coming to grips with what you can do by yourself and what you should let a professional handle.
“A lot of people want instant gratification,” says Russ Bedner, who has also begun focusing on landscaping as the owner of Bedner’s Farm & Greenhouse. “The biggest thing that got us into landscaping was that we were selling our nursery stock and when people would come in, the stuff they were buying was larger than expected.”
Realize that having your man card revoked is slight compared to the thousands of dollars that might be put out to find that another three years you are back in the same place you might be now: coming home to an eyesore that needs to be redone.
While nobody has all the answers, a few pieces of advice can go a long way in your pocketbook and limiting frustration in making your home beautiful from the outside.
• Have a plan going into the project(s) – This task may seem minuscule and like a waste of time; however, when decisions need to be made during the inception – the purchasing portion of the work – it will be invaluable.
• Know what you are buying – Do you want to put mulch on your property? Stone? There is a big difference on both price and physical labor. If you go the mulch route, hopefully the area getting the facelift will be easily accessible because you are going to revisit it year after year to keep the desired color. Stone requires much less maintenance other than the casual five-gallon buckets to fill empty areas occasionally, but you will pay more up front for stone. Another question that isn’t asked or answered until months after the work is complete is, “Will this bush, tree, shrub or plant grow in these specific conditions?” Sometimes the conditions of your soil are an unknown no matter what the conditions, but just make sure those conditions are as optimal as possible. “We’ve had people come to us with plans where plants, which only need partial sun, were planted in areas that would be beaten on with sun every day,” Bedner says. “Those plans weren’t done properly. We just want our customers to be able to have a successful experience.”
• Don’t be “that guy” or “that girl” – If you are going to do all this work only to make sure grass clippings fall into the landscaped area, or better yet fail to cut your grass at all, don’t invest the time and money. The one thing that can ruin any nice landscaping project is a failure to take care of your yard or doing it improperly. While the hard part might be digging a deep and wide enough hole to finally plant the whatever you decide to put in the ground, what is done afterwards is more important. “You have to know what you are doing if you want plants to be healthy,” Bedner says. “A lot of people come to us for our knowledge. We will give them the proper things to all them to be successful. The biggest thing customers don’t understand is water – not only the amount of water, but when to water. People will take something, plant it, and by the time it gets to be mid-summer, they are asking why it’s dead.”
• Realize what is too big for your britches – It’s okay to want a professional to come in and do the work. A lot of the time it’s even better to say that, especially with expensive and expansive projects. That doesn’t mean to say none of the work can be done on your own.
While the task of an outdoor “renovation” may seem mountainous in size and dollar amounts, basking outside surrounded by your newly landscaped residence will be well worth any of the short-lived aggravation.