Landscape plants

mobile home university
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Right now it is 15F outside, snow flurries and a wind chill factor of-5F. What am I doing here? No, no, that’s not what I meant to post about. My thoughts are turning to…spring landscaping of course! All you gardeners out there know exactly what I’m talking about:-)

For those residents in my community who want to participate, I will buy them a (1 gallon) tree to put between their and their neighbor’s home. The residents are responsible for watering the tree for the first year in July and August after which rains are sufficient. The problem is finding trees for narrow spaces. Here are two excellent sites I have come across:

www.forestfarm.com On the left side of the homepage you can search by category. Go to the “columnar” category.

www.sylvannursery.com/pdf/all.pdf The download is slow but look under the “columnar” category for some great info.

NEVER, NEVER, NEVER rely on just one source of information. ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS double-check the info on these sites with info specific to your area.

I’m always looking for successful mobile home community landscaping ideas so feel free to share any you have had and I’ll do likewise. The generosity of people in the MH business is perhaps exceeded only by those in the green industry.

Rolf

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Rolf,

You are a landscape professional so maybe you could give us all a few recommendations. Generally what trees will work best in a MHP for each region of our country with special attention being paid to future maintenance issues like root evasiveness and litter.

Thanks for the resources - Greg

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Greg,

Thanks for the vote of confidence in my horticultural skills however this is a bit of stretch for me to do here. If you would really like to get your question answered, suggest to Greg Meade that he should put me on the speaker lineup at the next MOM in Georgia. I would like to teach people a way to be able to competently answer that question for themselves. It’s really not at all difficult and something you can learn quickly.

Here is part of step #2 in a 4 step process: Do you know your zone? If you are in a part of the country where you can subscribe to “Sunset” magazine, then you should use Sunset’s zone system. If not, then do a search for USDA climate zones and determine into which classification you fall. This will give you immensely useful info right away and help with any type of plant selection.

Rolf