Gardening Advice From Ralph Snodsmith

In this piece on Garden Design that lays out eight landscape design principles, there are some things that I found interesting and wanted to share here.  Both for you, my dear reader, but also so I remember them.  To start, I thought I'd go with the final one on *their* list.  It was this final one  that caught my attention.  This little nugget is from a guy named Ralph Snodsmith who hosted a radio show about gardening in New York.  I'm sure he imparted quite a bit of knowledge to his listeners/callers, but it seems that he had one statement that stood above the rest.  This certainly feels like something I need to remind myself when I'm out in the garden:

"It’s better to plant a 50-cent plant in a $5 hole, than a $5 plant in a 50-cent hole."

The Garden Design piece goes on to say that there's no greater planting wisdom than this.  Hole preparation, especially for folks like me who, due to new construction, have a clay layer that is in many of the beds around our house foundation, is key to success in planting trees, shrubs and even flowers.  The photo at the top of this post shows the hole I dug to plant a small Bald Cypress tree late last Summer.  The post shows the hole that I dug.  It was a hard job to break through the clay bowl, but, I guess I was observing Mr. Snodsmith's advice even back then, without knowing it. 

Feels like something that is as close to a gardening mantra as I have come across.  Will try to remember this everytime we add something to the yard.