Everyone loves a bit of elbow room! Plants especially grow their best when they have enough room to reach their mature size unhindered!
Proper plant spacing is an essential part of planning your garden, along with choosing the right plant for the space you have!
How To Space Your Plant Correctly
Proper plant spacing starts with knowing your plant! Know its growing zone range to ensure it will work for your climate, and know its care needs about soil type, moisture needs, and drainage. And of course, the mature size of your plant!
The mature height and mature width will greatly determine the placement of your landscaping!
Sure you can prune a large shrub to keep it pigeonholed into a smaller area, but it will not allow it to reach its full potential and means more work for you.
Study the mature size when selecting your plants. Get out there and measure to determine the right number of plants for the area you are planting.
Proper spacing prevents:
- Foliar issues from poor air circulation around crowded plants
- Reduces stress
- Keeps plants from struggling due to competition
- Maintains good moisture and nutrient access
- Keeps plant stems strong and not reaching for light or growing leggy
- Stops interior leaves from being shaded out and dropping, leaving a sparse, sickly plant
Spacing Mistakes To Avoid
You’ll want to know your property because where you plant can also affect how your plants perform.
- Avoid installing plants right up against the house, other structures
- Avoid squeezing plants next to other plants that also have a lot of growing to do themselves
- Give them room to allow adequate airflow around the plant
As a special consideration, foundation plants especially, need a bit of extra room. Keep it easy on yourself. You’ll want leeway to wash windows, do home maintenance, or paint. Those tasks are a lot easier if your shrubs are not in the way.
Fruit trees and bushes, Roses, plants that are prone to powdery mildew issues, and plants in moist shade conditions are among those you especially need to plan some extra wiggle room for.
Exceptions To The Rule
Some plants are meant to rub elbows. Plants that are meant to grow as mass plantings or groundcovers can be planted closer together without harm.
Hedges
Hedges are another example of plants you want to grow together and touch. Plant them closer together to achieve your goal of a solid screen faster. Just keep them pruned in such a way as to prevent the plants from shading themselves out.
No matter what the hedge plant spacing is, the key to a healthy hedge is to maintain the bottoms of each plant wider than the tops. This allows the sun to reach the sides and tops keeping them full and bushy right to the ground!
Keep in mind that hedges are essentially a double-sided row of plants. Ensure you have good air exposure on either side of your hedge. This will help you grow a healthy hedge. Depending on the spacing, you’ll achieve a seamless row of green, or a row of evenly spaced (or informally spaced) plants as either a visual barrier, impenetrable fenceline, property division, or screening hedge.
Edging & Facer Plants
Another exception to the spacing suggestions might be how you use your perennials. Sometimes you can use one perennial to help support another or as facer plants in front of taller, leggier plants.
Other perennials may be large and robust early in the season and melt out with the summer heat so you may have other perennials nearby that can help to fill that void or provide shade.
You may also want to use perennials a bit tighter in spacing near the spring flowering bulbs too so when they are done blooming you can use that same space with some color from a perennial in that same space.
Many like to plant perennials tighter also to display some excellent companion plants blooming at the same time for contrasting and complementary color combinations.
Tips To Ensure Proper Spacing
Install plants far enough apart to accommodate the size of the plant as it grows and develops. You’ll be glad you took the time to "measure twice, and plant once!".
- Installing plants based on their mature width or by spacing multiple plants by measuring their mature distance "on center". A shrub with a mature width of 5 feet should be planted at least 5 feet on-center away from its neighboring shrubs' central trunk; measuring from one shrub’s center to the next.
- You should install plants half their mature distance plus some extra walking room away from structures, pathways, driveways, and foundations.
- Hedges and groundcovers can be planted closer than their mature widths, the spacing depending on how quickly and how fully you wish them to grow together.
- Choose a location with morning sun access when planning where to install Roses, Fruit plants, and powdery mildew-prone landscaping. The morning sun dries the leaves of dew and reduces foliar issues and fungal infections when a lack of airflow and high humidity are unavoidable.
- Many orchards and vineyards are planted in open areas with southeast exposure and away from low areas where cold air can pool.
- Use drip irrigation to keep the water at the roots only where they need it most. Avoid spraying water using overhead sprinklers that get the foliage wet and can cause an increase in foliar problems.
- Thin seedlings before they get too large and begin to crowd each other out, leading to smaller, stressed plants.
- Instead of packing a bunch of immature plants together for a fuller garden look, either plant them at their mature widths distance apart and watch eagerly as they grow to their mature grandeur. But if you want the fullness and more immediate impact from your new landscaping, choose the largest container size that NatureHills.com has available for you to choose from!
This will keep your plants healthier, and your foliage looking its best all growing season long! Plus healthier and longer-lived plants in the future! More blooms, fuller plants, faster growth, and a better return on your investment and all the work you’ve put into your landscape!
Plant With Some Wiggle Room In Mind!
Planting with your landscape's mature width in mind will save you loads of work and heartache down the road! Pruning will only control things to an extent so giving your plants the room they will need, no matter how small they start, will benefit everyone in the long run!
Give your landscaping a breath of fresh air! Check out all the incredible plants for you to fill your garden with at Nature Hills Nursery! Choose the largest container size available for a bigger impact and less wait time, and use Nature Hills Root Booster at planting time to ensure your roots get established faster and boost them for life with the symbiotic support of mycorrhizae fungi.
Happy Planting!
