DIY Network

Jim and Emery: Plan, Costs and Products Meet Jim Swearingen and Emery Schmidt and find out the gardening challenge plan. From "Garden Sense" episode DGAR-307

Walter with Jim and Emery

Meet Jim Swearingen and Emery Schmidt. They own a 19th century Victorian home. They have spent more than a decade restoring the inside and it's a real masterpiece. Outside is another story. They have started to build a wall with new concrete steps running into the middle of the landscape and they hired a professional to build stone walls to support new planting beds. Now they need our help to create a show-stopping three-to-four season landscape.

Jim and Emery are planning to show off their new landscape as part of their neighborhood garden tour in just a few weeks and have asked DIY Garden Sense to help them pull it off. They want to outside to be well worth the price of admission for the people who take the tour.

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Gardening Challenge

Before--front from the street

Before--side view

After--front from the street

After--side view

After--backyard

Required Project Timeline

This project took us just six hours because we started with great soil.

Project Details

Walter and the DIY Garden Sense team came up with a plan designed to highlight the architecture and impress all the visitors on the upcoming garden tour.

The design gave the beds a formal feel that mirror each other with the type of balance typical of the style of the home. Careful attention was paid to color. The plants needed to match the house, so lots of purples, pinks and blues were utilized. Finally, the beds were packed because a garden tour means "It's Showtime."

We started with two kinds of cotoneaster to give color throughout the seasons. In the upper bed, we added Coral Beauty with wonderful berries. In the lower bed, we added Willowleaf because of its interesting, arching branches and because it holds its leaves a long time.

For year-round color, we used three kinds of evergreens, including a creeping Colorado Blue Spruce. Then we filled the beds with lots and lots of annual flowers that will attract a lot of attention.

Choosing Great Soil

Jim and Emery made a sensible choice to bring in truckloads of great soil for their project.

When you shop for good soil, look for a garden mix, which is a blend of topsoil, manure and coarse sand. Test the soil in your hands before you buy it. Pick it up and squeeze it to make sure it's friable or crumbles readily. You also should test the soil by getting it wet, and squeezing it into a ball. Then, push it with your finger and it should still fall apart. That's a sign of good soil.

Gardening by Zip Code If you're looking to start a gardening projectbut don't know your gardening zone—visit the National Gardening Associations's USDA Hardiness Zone Finder. Enter your Zip Code to identify the proper zone.

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