Ten Ideas for Your Yard – Including Trees

Shop like the Landscaping Pros

Where to go in Edison, NJ and Near Me (you)

Trees and Seeding Your Lawn

You probably spend time in your yard and have an idea of how you’d like to change it or add to it to make more beautiful or practical. But what if your budget doesn’t include any money for your yard how you’d like it to be. Should you just throw in the towel and give up?

Nooooooo! Here are ten ideas on how you can improve your surroundings with almost any size budget.

1. Take inventory on what you have and use it. Look around, your existing landscape might just have everything you need. How many different plants do you have? What varieties? Do you have a seedling of a tree that you can transplant and nurture to maturity? Take some of your existing plants and transplant them to areas of your landscape that will make a greater impact. Think of this like rearranging your living room furniture. You can bring plants or just the right tree together to make groupings and change the focus of your yard. A simple look at what you have may give you everything you need to get the desired feel and more than you expected!

2. Shop like the pros do. Where do your local landscapers buy their trees and plants? One place they don’t buy from is the high priced retail nursery or big box store near you. Let your fingers do the walking and type “wholesale nursery” “your city” (replace ‘your city’ with the town you live in) and you will quickly find where your local landscapers go for the items they mark up for resale. Not all nurseries like this will sell to the public, but some will. If you can find one that does, you’ll pay about 50% of what you’d pay elsewhere and this can add up. Here are two nurseries near Edison, NJ to get you started:

Barton Nursery
949 New Durham Road
Edison, NJ 08817

LP Statile
490 Mountain Avenue
Springfield, NJ 07081
Tel: (973) 379-5811

Sweetbrook Nursery & Garden Center
2371 Forest Ave.
Staten Island, NY 10303

3. Take one step at a time instead of trying to tackle your entire landscape at once. Pick manageable areas of your yard, starting with the focal points, and begin there. Once you have this area done, move on to the next area. You will be surprised how quickly your landscape can come together!

4. Trees. Trees take up space vertically and can give you a stylistic bang for your dollar. Consider the canopy size of the eventually mature tree and consider the color in both the first bloom of spring and the foliage of fall. Dogwood trees don’t grow too tall but have a beautiful bloom and shape. Japanese Maple trees are wonderful in the fall. The color will impact the look of your yard and can make a huge impact. Want to replace a tree and need a tree removed, go here.

5. Seed Your Lawn. If you don’t know the first thing about seeding your lawn, watch your local landscapers. When they seed you seed. As a general rule of thumb, seed your yard on the last snowfall and then in the fall. It can save you a lot of time and money compared to buying sod. Yes, you will need to pay close attention to it and nurture it, but the results will be well worth it.

6. Simplify the materials you use but don’t sacrifice your vision. You see an amazing landscape or tree on Pinterest or on some real estate website and after a little bit of digging you realize they used an expense bluestone. No problem. Look for a good substitute. Maybe a paver that mimics stone will do the trick. Maybe compacted gravel will fit in your budget. Don’t give up on your vision just because your first choice of material doesn’t fit in your budget.

7. Start small with your shrubs and plants. You can find ground cover or various types of grasses that come in flats with small plants. Even at retail nurseries, the cost of these will be much less than a 1 gallon plant. And here’s the inside scoop – they’ll mature to the same size!!!

8. Look for damaged plants. Many nurseries have a back corner where they have plants that have been damaged. Some will have a broken branch or two or might be almost dead. In most cases, with a little attention and care these could rebound into a very healthy plant, and you could pick them up for as much as 75% off their retail price.

9. Watch your dollars but don’t be cheap. Short term gain can often turn into long term cost – and it might not be worth it. Thinking about the cheap plastic edging you just saw? Steel edging is not that much more but will last much longer.

10. Use seeds. Do you have a barren spot in your yard where you envision something beyond your budget. Plant a few flowers or plants from seeds. Think of them as placeholders for your eventual masterpiece.

The key to a great yard or garden on a budget is patience. It’s a virtue when it comes to creating the look and esthetic you want. It takes time for mother nature to do her think. Small plants need time to grow.

If you give up and just want to start over, go here.