Enliven Your Landscape from the Ground Up with Landscape Designer Wanda Hart, U.S. Lawns of Northport.
Ever wonder how the pros garden? Follow our fall blog series, DIGGER DIARIES, for advice on lusher landscapes, showstopping containers, and healthier houseplants from some of the most active gardeners, nursery managers, and professional landscapers in the deep-South region. Dig it?
Does your landscape need a lift? Licensed landscape designer Wanda Hart manages several commercial landscapes for US Lawns of Northport.
In the gently rolling hills of West Alabama, Wanda designs flower-filled landscapes, supervises crews, and helps clients plan inviting outdoor spaces. “I love working with nature. That’s what really intrigues me,” she says.
For anyone hoping to give their own yard a makeover this fall, here’s a peek inside her professional playbook. For Wanda, it all comes down to preparing the soil—and being present in the garden. Lucky for us, fall is the perfect time to do just that.
On knowing where to start: Wanda believes the key to a better landscape starts with taking
notes. “Have a garden journal,” advises Wanda. It doesn’t have to be fancy, she assures. “It can be a loose-leaf notebook. Take some pictures.” What you’re after here is information.
“The biggest thing is, you have to be present in the garden,” she advises. “It’s good for your mental health. It’s a great stress reliever. Walk among your plants, see if they’re struggling. Are they getting too much water, not enough water, do they need more iron?”
No matter what its care tag might say, Wanda says most areas have so many micro-climates that a plant may not always perform the way you’d expect. That’s where a garden journal helps. If you engage a professional for a new design, they’ll be interested in what has worked and what hasn’t in your particular yard.
“I’ll tell you another thing,” she shares, “it’ll really make you feel proud when you see your garden evolve over time and all the things you’ve done to nurture it. It’s so rewarding to look back at where you might have started and see your journey.”
On the single most important task for fall: “For us, it is the soil. You have to prepare the soil,” she urges. For most of the commercial landscapes Wanda manages, that means tilling the beds before
replanting with pansies and other winter annuals. Traditionally, before tilling, Wanda and her crews would spend a lot of time raking back the mulch—until they discovered “a game changer.”
By using Penick Organics Flower & Garden Mulch, “I don’t have to rake that mulch out when I change flowers. You just till it into the soil!” she exclaims. “The first year we were hesitant to do that. That’s so counterintuitive to everything we know. But it has made such a difference long-term in the health of the plants that we put in that bed,” says Wanda.
“When I first started doing flower bed designs and installs, we would just go to the big box store and buy their compost,” she recalls, “but when we were introduced to Penick Organics Flower & Garden Mulch, we can absolutely visibly see a difference, especially in flowers. The blooms are just bigger, they’re healthier. The soil is richer. It’s locally made, locally sourced. It’s just better.”
At home, Wanda prefers a no-till approach to soil prep, and likes to use Digger’s Delight Premium Potting Soil. Either way, she makes sure the plants get the nutrients they need this season to carry them through winter’s ups and downs.
On the secret to prettier pansies: From fall to early spring, pansies bring essential color to our Southern landscapes. This season alone, Wanda’s company will install hundreds of trays of them. “They’ll be running out our ears by October,” she laughs.
The trouble is, in some yards, they’ll stay as full and bright as they did the day they were installed, while in others, they start looking puny well before their time. Wanda knows why, and what to do about it. If light conditions and water are accounted for, she turns her attention underground.
“Especially in the winter, you never know what you’re gonna get here in the South. It could be warm, cold, or flash-freeze,” says Wanda. “The soil makes all the difference. The nutrients in the soil are just very important in helping those plants recover from, one day it’s 75 degrees, and the next day it’s 40 degrees,” Wanda explains.
To be proactive, she says, “we add Penick Organics Loamate Soil Enricher directly to the beds, and we top-dress with their Flower & Garden Mulch. That helps tremendously,” she says. “If you feed the soil, the soil will feed your plant with what they need, when they need it. It’s our job to feed the soil.
On getting the most from your mulch: Mulch is a year-round hero in the garden. It holds your soil in place, protects plant roots from winter’s cold, retains moisture through summer’s heat, and suppresses weeds. But if you only mulch your landscape once a year, do it in the fall. Covering with a 2-3-inch layer of mulch before the first frost is one key to a beautiful show next season. The question is, which mulch do you need?
As Wanda explains above, Penick Organics Flower & Garden Mulch is fantastic for flower beds, but in hillier areas like Tuscaloosa, it can be tricky to make any mulch stay put on a steep slope. For that, Wanda suggests Penick Organics Norman Mulch. “What drew us to the Norman Mulch, besides the fact that it holds its color really well, is that it doesn’t wash away. It just stays in place so well. We’ve been very pleased with that. There have been many times when we thought ‘We’ll just go buy something real quick at the big box store,’ but no, the Norman Mulch is just a better product,” finds Wanda.
On reviving older landscapes in decline: So many of us in the South inherit mature gardens, whether from a passed-down family home, or a new-to-you house in a long-established neighborhood. When trees, shrubs, and beds start showing their age, the good news is, there’s something you can do
“If you take a landscape that’s older, you know after 40 years or so, that soil is pretty depleted typically” Wanda explains. “So if you add products like Loamate Soil Enricher, it helps everything get off to a great start.”
As a commercial landscaper, Wanda started noticing Loamate Soil Enricher works so well, it actually helps her bottom line. “We don’t have to replace things!” she found. “Like us, most commercial landscapers will give you a guarantee on their plants. Amending the soil this way helps us not have to replace something because it dies.” As the saying goes, numbers don’t lie.
On the most common landscape mistake to avoid: In a nutshell? Skipping the groundwork. “Everybody wants big, beautiful plants, but maybe they don’t want to invest in an irrigation system to water the plants, or the right soil to feed the plants. Your plants are not going to thrive in that environment. It’s the same as you! You have to have water, you have to have food, you have to have what you need to thrive in life, and plants have to have the same,” she emphasizes. All told, the way your landscape looks above ground has a lot to do with what’s below.
On what keeps her coming back to the dirt: “I love to see things thrive and if a plant didn’t make it, I love trying to figure out why. I test the soil. I love to see the plants grow, and I love being out in nature. I love to have a place for butterflies and birds and have nature do what God intended it to do and to be,” she shares, adding, “We are simply the custodians of it.”
To inquire about working with Wanda Hart and U.S. Lawns of Northport for your commercial landscape, email wanda.hart@uslawns.net.
By Jessica Russell Hilton for Penick Organics
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