Strategic Bushes
Strategic Bushes
When planning a garden or even landscaping your home’s yard, you should seriously consider the strategic use of bushes. Planting bushes is something of a compromise for some people. Bushes are much larger than flowers and plants, but they’re not nearly as large or slow growing as trees. Often they provide the same beauty though, and sometimes the same benefits you’ll get from trees too.
Trees are useful for shade, blocking the wind, or filtering some of the strong sunlight from reaching your house. These all help keep your heating and cooling bills down.
Not everyone has the room for trees though, and some of us are too impatient to wait for the trees to grow to full size and maturity. And that’s where bushes can come in handy.
Bushes can also help shade your home and protect it from the wind. They don’t usually grow as tall as trees so they won’t provide quite as much shade, but strategic placement of your bushes can make great differences in both look and functionality.
Some bushes will flower just like regular flowers and plants do. Some will even get berries on them which attracts birds and squirrels. Others might turn different colors during different seasons… lending a very appealing attractiveness to your home year round.
A common mistake many people make when planting bushes though, is putting them too close to your house. Like flowers and trees, bushes are usually small when they’re first planted. So they don’t look too great - or at least not nearly as nice as you’d imagined - in the beginning. Because of the initial size, people will plant a bush right up against the outside wall of a house, in front of a window, or just a foot or two away. As the bush starts to grow and expand though, many become very large problems in just a few years.
That pretty petite little flowering bush you planted in front of your window now blocks the entire view. And the one right up against the house wall is now starting to create cracks in your home’s foundation.
So the first thing to know when shopping for new bushes to plant is: How large will it be when it’s fully grown? This is very important. Not only should you pay attention to how tall the bush will be, you also need to know how much breadth it will have. In other words: How far out will it spread?
If you buy a bush that grows to 6 feet in height, but has a spread of 12 feet, you probably would not want to plant it two feet from your house wall. If you do plant it that close, you’ll end up with foundation damage in later years.
If you want a bush in front of your living room window, try to imagine what it will be like in three to five years. A bush that only grows about 4 feet tall might be best for instance, so you’re not blocking the window entirely once it’s grown.
If however, you have a very large window in your home that lets in too much sun and heat part of the year, you might actually want to buy a bush that will grow large in both height and breadth. Planting it in front of a problem window will help reduce the amount of light and heat that’s getting into your home, and that will in turn help you reduce heating expenses for your home.
The same applies for privacy. If you have a window in your home that looks straight into the neighbors house… you could plant a strategically sized bush in front of that window to create a natural privacy screen.
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