Landscaping: Get Off to a Good Start This Spring

Tom Strangfeld's views on lanscaping would be at home in the best comedy club - and he wouldn't have to change a word.

Like the best comedy, Tom looks with fresh eyes on what we see everyday.

Mulch muffins (mulch piled around tree base).

Addams Family Victorians (ornate, top-heavy houses that have influenced generations of landscapers and property owns to plant shrubs around the base of every home).

And psychological profiling (showing a slide of topiary corkscrews, he asks, "Who's office do you think this is? ... Lawyers.")

Strangfeld says landscaping is not about plants ("Of course, I'd like you to buy plants at Weston Nurseries," he adds.) but about spaces.

"Landscaping is the first room in your house that people enter," he says. "It's about capturing your senses, your feelings, your imagination."

Strangfeld says each lot, like the people who live in the house it sits on, is different. Capture the essence of space, he urges - from the street, from the driveway, from the entryways, from features specific to your property and personality.

As people come to your home, or even view it from the street, you want to turn them along different passages and destinations created by your yard's natural features, and your enhancemment of those features.

Landscape Designer Tom Strangfeld can be reached at  508-293-8042 or
TomS@WestonNurseries.com.

Weston Nurseries has other landscape designers as well, wwith discounts on their services when you go forward with a project from Weston Nurseries landscaping team.

Tom's 5 izes

Fantasize: Imagine the end result.

Analyze: Landscape design is like a sculpture hidden in a block of granite.

Conceptualize: Form a design.

Criticize: First choices may not be the best. Garden hoses and empty pails are great for mock-ups.

Realize: Do it yourself. Do it turn-key. Phase it. Stop and ask if you see something you like. (Everybody likes compliments about their landscaping.)