Before Buying Plants, Make a Plan
Last updated May 2024
To get started, determine your garden’s soil type and acidity, how things drain, and how much sun different parts of your property get.
When making a plan (or adding to an existing one), you’ll want to match plant types with areas where they’ll probably thrive. Account for how your property will look immediately and years from now when your plants have grown. Without a plan, you could wind up with a mishmash of flowers and bushes that don’t look good together, shade where you wanted sun, or a jumbo tree blocking the view from your picture window. Worst yet, you might pay for expensive plants when inexpensive ones would work just as well.
Do a rough drawing of your house, other structures, property lines, and desired plants. Get guidelines and ideas from gardening websites, friends with attractive outdoor spaces, and the experts listed below.
If you want professional help, you have several options. A garden center or landscape contractor can send a designer to your place. And if you want to do your own buying and planting, you can pay a consultation fee for help preparing your own plan or a design fee if a designer draws the plan. Or get a free consultation by asking a nursery for a landscaping estimate.
You can also hire a landscape architect or garden designer to do everything, including consultation, design, assistance in selecting a landscape contractor, and supervision of plant selection and contractor performance. Or get only the consultation or the design. Your first conversation with an architect may be free; from then on, fees are set in various ways.
Expert Advice
Your county’s cooperative extension office has master gardeners whom you can call for advice and can help you diagnose plant problems if you bring or send them specimens. Other local sources of gardening expertise:
Bartram’s Garden
5400 Lindbergh Boulevard
Philadelphia, PA 19143
215-729-5281
Camden Children’s Garden
3 Riverside Drive
Camden, NJ 08103
856-365-8733
Chanticleer
786 Church Road
Wayne, PA 19087
610-687-4163
Morris Arboretum & Gardens
100 E. Northwestern Avenue
Philadelphia, PA 19118
215-247-5777
PennState Extension
323 Agricultural Building
University Park, PA 16802
877-345-0691
Pennsylvania Horticultural Society
100 N. 20th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19103
215-988-8800
Rutgers Cooperative Extension
88 Lipman Drive
New Brunswick, NJ 08901
The Scott Arboretum of Swarthmore College
500 College Avenue
Swarthmore, PA 19081
610-328-8025
Tyler Arboretum
515 Painter Road
Media, PA 19063
610-566-9134
University of Delaware Cooperative Extension
461 Wyoming Road
Newark, DE 19716
302-831-2506
