Here, for your reading pleasure. I'm sure it's riveting.

If memory serves, we started working on this not long after the breakup...which explains the lead comparing landscaping to marital problems.

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Take time to organize, design your first plantings

By Dickie Cronkite and Reed Rothchild
Medill News Service
(For the Daily Herald special section, "Your First Home" 3/4)


Nobody talks about landscaping, says Kim Denny, owner of Highland Green Nursery Inc. outside of Grayslake.

Every couple moving into their first home has already discussed their cars and furniture, says Denny. Sadly, they'll never talk about trees and flowers.

So when they get to the greenhouse, the fallout can be harrowing. "We end up being as much marriage counselors as we do designers," says Denny.

But don't despair – done right, home landscaping won't lead to marital disaster. "It can actually be a very fun thing to do," says Barry Conlin, owner and president of C.B. Conlin Landscapes Inc. in Naperville. "People have told me the most fun they've had is designing the landscape."

We asked a few landscape experts for advice to first-time homebuyers.

Finding help: Conlin recommends asking neighbors for suggestions and steering clear of homeowners associations, which might pitch a landscaper simply for advertising revenue rather than credibility. "If you have a rapport with someone," says Cherie Klaasen, owner of Gardens by Cherie in Glen Ellyn, "it's going to come out nicely."

Planning ahead: "Figure out what your priorities are," says Heather Ward, marketing manager of the Barn Nursery and Landscape Center in Cary. Some people find they prefer the way deciduous bushes emphasize the changing seasons. Others prefer evergreens.

"One of the biggest mistakes is to give carte blanche to a landscaper," says Mary Ann Anderson, a Lisle homeowner and satisfied customer of Conlin. Don't be afraid to work together. "Even a simple drawing by hand is good," says Anna Turk, manager of Turks' Greenhouses near Grayslake.

Spend a day watching the sun progress across your yard, noting where it lingers longest. Mark your simple map with the cardinal directions: light-hungry plants should sit near southern-facing walls, since the sun is always to the south.

Your plants will grow, so anticipate. "Overgrowing or overplanting is the biggest problem people make," says Denny. "It's all about instant gratification." Instead of packing plants tightly, put them in small, odd-numbered clusters with plenty of empty space. They’ll fill in after a year or two, he promises.

Many people design their whole front yard while looking straight at their front door, says Denny. Don't blinker yourself: check the view from the sidewalk, the driveway, and across the street.

Holding down costs: Hiring landscapers can cost anywhere from a few thousand to a few hundred thousand – it all depends on your design. Some firms offer payment plans, with the work broken into phases based on the seasons and your checkbook.

The more functional the yard, generally, the more expensive. One higher-end landscaper says the norm is to invest 10 percent of property value into landscaping; another says a property below $250,000 can be finished for $2,000 to $12,000.

If you've got the will to do the labor yourself, you can save a lot: about half the cost of any construction (decks, stonework, and so forth) and a third of the cost for plants. You can even skip the landscape designer – some greenhouses will sketch you a basic design if you promise to buy all your plants from them.

Think about resale value, too. The best single best value booster, landscapers say, is an attractive entranceway – perhaps a brick walkway and bushes to frame the door. Brick patios are cheaper than wooden decks, require less maintenance, and boost your value more.

There are two kinds of plants: perennials, which come back each year, and annuals, which don't. Perennials tend to be more expensive up front, but they're far cheaper in the long run. Perennials do tend to have shorter flowering seasons, however, so an ideal garden mixes both types.

Buy your annuals in large plastic flats, not individually.

A great way to save purchase costs is to "split and swap" perennials with friends and neighbors. Perennials tend to strangle in their own roots after a year or two, so they should ideally be split in two with a shovel and planted separately. If a neighbor’s shrub catches your eye, offer to trade half of yours for half of theirs.

Local power companies (including ComEd) often turn the branches they trim from trees into wood chips and offer them to gardeners as free mulch.

Other tips: Where there’s a green thumb, there’s a bag of tricks. It's impossible to talk to gardeners for long without a flow of suggestions like these:

· Midwestern gardens are cursed with flatness. The small altitude change of a ridge or incline goes a long way toward improving a lawn's contours.

· If starting from scratch, plant a backdrop of evergreens and shrubs along the edges of your lot. After a few years of growth, they’ll pay for themselves in increased property value. Thorny barberry bushes can be an attractive way to keep intruding animals away.

· Perennials need maintenance. If you're not going to have much time to invest, try spirea, barberry, or autumn blaze maple.

· Ground cover, like pachysandra or vinca, takes almost no maintenance, keeps out weeds, and grows fast. It's the quickest way to fill an empty-looking garden.

· When watering, constancy is more important than volume.

· Many new yards have a thin layer of topsoil atop hard, caked clay. Some plants are more clay-friendly than others, but almost nothing will survive unless you buy soil and mix it with the clay below. After a few years, the roots will do their work and you won't have to worry as much.

· Finally, take it easy and learn from the mistakes you're sure to make. "This should be fun," says Pat Horcher, owner of Horcher’s Country Flowers in Wheeling. "Don't get so hung up on the gardening that it's going to be nerve-wracking."

"If you're worried about killing some of these plants, take a step back," he adds. "It's a plant."