Save time, maintenance and frustration by designing your landscape with the right plants for the right places. Different plants grow best with different sun exposure, moisture, soil and drainage. Plants well-suited to your site’s characteristics will be healthier, and require less supplemental water and maintenance.

Understanding soils, plants and areas of your landscape with unique climate characteristics will help you design a garden suitable for your site's conditions. Start by getting to know the different areas of your site before you decide which plants will work best in various locations. Note: sunny, partially sunny and shady areas; dry, moist and wet areas; soil types; existing plants that need to be moved, removed, or kept; areas that need water; existing buildings, patios, underground utilities and overhead utility lines; and slopes or depressions.

Read more in our Planning and Planting brochure. Visit the City of Tacoma EnviroHouse to learn more about sustainable landscapes or read about the EnviroHouse Sustainable Landscape.

To select low-maintenance plants suited for your site, know your planting zones and requirements. Considerations include:

• Site conditions (such as dry and sunny, wet and sunny, dry and shady, or wet and shady)
• Choosing native, adapted, or low or very low water-using plants
• Grouping plants by their needs for sun, water, and maintenance
• The size plants should be when mature (such as ground covers, different sized shrubs, or small trees)
• Creating year-round interest with plant form, texture, bark and fruit

Native, adapted, and low water-use plants are great choices because they are adapted to our climate with wet winters and dry summers. Resources for plants:

• Pick the right native plant for your site
• Native and adapted plants at the EnviroHouse
• Northwest Native Plant Guide
• Great Plant Picks
• Bellevue Botanical Garden Waterwise Garden
• Washington State University native plant database

If you are interested in removing part of your lawn to create more landscaped area or a vegetable garden, there are two basic methods you can use: cover it up or dig it out.

Cover it up

This is the easiest method since organisms that live in the soil do the work for you. It is also best for your soil because you won’t lose topsoil and as grass is composted it will enrich your soil. However, it takes more time before you can plant.

1. Dig a test hole to find out how deed your top soil is. If it is less than 6 inches deep, you will need to add more top soil in step 3.
2. Lay sheets of corrugated cardboard or newspaper in an overlapping pattern over the grass you want to replace. Overlapping edges by at least 2 to 3 inches and covering gaps is critical if you want to avoid grass growing up through your covering. If you use newspaper, avoid glossy inserts and use layers that are 6 or more sheets thick.
3. If your soil needs more organic matter, spread 1 to 2 inches of compost over the newspaper or cardboard. Spread mulch 6 inches thick over the newspaper or cardboard and compost. If you needed to add topsoil (see step 1), add the amount of weed-free topsoil needed and then cover with 6 inches of compost or mulch.
4. In about 6 months the area will be ready for planting. Planting is best done between October and April. If you are anxious to plant immediately, before you begin step 2 you can plant directly into your lawn. Simply dig a hole twice as wide as your plant’s roots and amend the hole with compost before planting. Remove all grass within a foot of the plant’s root system. Follow steps 2 and 3, covering the soil with cardboard or newspaper to within 4 inches of the plant’s trunk.

Dig it out
This is the quickest method and will allow you to plant in the entire area immediately. However, it is also the most work and you will lose some topsoil that will need to be replaced, especially if you don’t have much topsoil to begin with.

1. Dig a test hole to find out how deep your top soil is. If it is less than 6 inches deep, you will need to add more in step 4.
2. Plan to begin your work a couple days after it has rained or you have watered. This will help with getting under grass roots.
3. Use a spade, hoe, or sod cutter to dig your grass out. If you are using a spade or hoe, simply cut your grass into 1-foot-wide strips, slice under grass roots with your spade and pull or roll up sections of sod. If you have a large area, you may want to rent a sod cutter, which will slice through grass roots so that you can roll up sod.
4. If you have less than six inches of topsoil, add weed-free topsoil as needed. Dig compost into your soil at this time, too, to enrich the planting area. Use 10 to 20% compost by volume (1 inch of compost dug into 5 inches of soil is 20%, or 3 inches of compost dug into 12 inches of soil is 25%). Make sure that you mix new topsoil and compost into the planting area evenly so that roots are free to spread. You are now ready to plant.
5. You will remove soil with the sod, so sod cannot be placed in your yard waste bin. Instead, if you want to create a raised area in part of your yard, you can deposit sod there. Sod will need to compost before it can be planted on, so simply cover your pile with cardboard and 6 inches of mulch. In several months the area will be ready to plant (you can plant a temporary cover crop such as native strawberries or clover in the meantime). If you do not want to create a raised area, you can deposit sod in an unused area of your yard, cover it with black plastic, and wait until it composts. In several months you will have rich topsoil for use elsewhere in your yard.