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Jenna Bayer Garden Design, Inc.
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Pro Spotlight: Plan Ahead for a Long-Lasting Garden
Show your plants a little love and you’ll avoid costly restorations, this West Coast landscaper says
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Who: Jenna Bayer
Where: Mountain View, California, and Portland, Oregon
In her own words: “Sure, you can engineer a building and expect it to be there in 20 years. But plants are living and breathing. Your garden will only be successful if you stop yourself and ask: Can this actually survive here?”
With unpredictable weather, less-predictable schedules, and kids and pets running around your yard, it’s impossible to know how long the plants in your garden will last. Landscaper Jenna Bayer of Jenna Bayer Garden Design, in Mountain View and Portland, says a little foresight is the key to an ever-green garden: “With an organic and sustainable approach, a garden can be created and maintained for a lifetime without having to redo the landscape every few years.”
Where: Mountain View, California, and Portland, Oregon
In her own words: “Sure, you can engineer a building and expect it to be there in 20 years. But plants are living and breathing. Your garden will only be successful if you stop yourself and ask: Can this actually survive here?”
With unpredictable weather, less-predictable schedules, and kids and pets running around your yard, it’s impossible to know how long the plants in your garden will last. Landscaper Jenna Bayer of Jenna Bayer Garden Design, in Mountain View and Portland, says a little foresight is the key to an ever-green garden: “With an organic and sustainable approach, a garden can be created and maintained for a lifetime without having to redo the landscape every few years.”
Green thumb. Bayer bought her first house when she was 23. “The one issue I had was its muddy, lifeless front yard,” she says. “I took a couple of landscaping classes to learn to fix the problem. There I discovered my connection with nature. In no time, I defined “fun” as going to nurseries and taking plant taxonomy courses. I eventually left my engineering job, because this was my passion.”
Doing it right. “A sustainable garden means a lot of things,” Bayer says. “Ultimately, it means putting the right plant in the right place for the right purpose. You can’t put a beautiful Japanese maple in the baking sun. Not everyone can keep up a lawn. It’s about finding what works and what will last.”
Design a garden that you can enjoy for years to come by following Bayer’s tips below.
Design a garden that you can enjoy for years to come by following Bayer’s tips below.
1. Enrich Your Soil
Maintain your soil so that it can naturally sustain your garden throughout the seasons. “A heavy clay soil is no use to your plants if it’s dried up,” Bayer says. “If you layer the soil with fallen leaves during autumn, they’ll decompose in the winter rain and provide some much-needed nutrients.”
So the leaves don’t blow away, Bayer suggests covering them with a layer of compost, as she does seasonally in the garden in Woodside, California, seen here. “Nothing leaves this property — trimmed plants, grass clippings,” she says. “Everything is reused to enrich the soil during winter.”
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Maintain your soil so that it can naturally sustain your garden throughout the seasons. “A heavy clay soil is no use to your plants if it’s dried up,” Bayer says. “If you layer the soil with fallen leaves during autumn, they’ll decompose in the winter rain and provide some much-needed nutrients.”
So the leaves don’t blow away, Bayer suggests covering them with a layer of compost, as she does seasonally in the garden in Woodside, California, seen here. “Nothing leaves this property — trimmed plants, grass clippings,” she says. “Everything is reused to enrich the soil during winter.”
See more of this project
2. Prune Your Trees
It’s best to do this during winter, trimming at the base of each small branchlet. “Consider what type of tree it is, and what purpose it serves in your garden,” Bayer says. “It’s very different to trim a tree that’s meant to be bushy and cover your neighbor’s fence line, versus a delicate, focal-point tree.”
Take, for example, the Japanese maple seen here at right on a client’s property in Los Altos, California. “Rather than give the whole thing a crew cut, you want to enjoy the architecture of those branches,” she says. “You have to trim it carefully, branch by branch, making sure none cross.”
See more of this project
It’s best to do this during winter, trimming at the base of each small branchlet. “Consider what type of tree it is, and what purpose it serves in your garden,” Bayer says. “It’s very different to trim a tree that’s meant to be bushy and cover your neighbor’s fence line, versus a delicate, focal-point tree.”
Take, for example, the Japanese maple seen here at right on a client’s property in Los Altos, California. “Rather than give the whole thing a crew cut, you want to enjoy the architecture of those branches,” she says. “You have to trim it carefully, branch by branch, making sure none cross.”
See more of this project
3. Let Your Garden Be the Guide
Use landscaping to navigate guests through your garden. “Humans rarely walk in perfectly straight lines or turn at right angles,” Bayer says. “Use beautiful attention-grabbers to subconsciously tell people where to walk.”
Clients in Palo Alto, California, have a volleyball court, a basketball court, a vegetable garden and a pool area. “The landscape needed to guide the family from one destination to the other,” she says. “Brightly colored plants can notify people of a transition coming up or trip hazards like steps. Even motion in grass can point you in a certain direction.”
See more of this project
More: For more information on Jenna Bayer and examples of her work, visit Jenna Bayer Garden Design’s Houzz profile.
This story was written by the Houzz Sponsored Content team.
Use landscaping to navigate guests through your garden. “Humans rarely walk in perfectly straight lines or turn at right angles,” Bayer says. “Use beautiful attention-grabbers to subconsciously tell people where to walk.”
Clients in Palo Alto, California, have a volleyball court, a basketball court, a vegetable garden and a pool area. “The landscape needed to guide the family from one destination to the other,” she says. “Brightly colored plants can notify people of a transition coming up or trip hazards like steps. Even motion in grass can point you in a certain direction.”
See more of this project
More: For more information on Jenna Bayer and examples of her work, visit Jenna Bayer Garden Design’s Houzz profile.
This story was written by the Houzz Sponsored Content team.
Jenna Bayer Garden Design creates a relationship with clients that is communicative and productive, in order to... Read More
Review by Dale Larson:
We could not be more happy with the metidulous and artful work that has transformed our front yard. We will enjoy this gift far into the future,