Any, even the most beautiful house looks unattractive if it stands on a groomed area. This picture is created by randomly planted trees and shrubs. Sometimes they look like an impassable windbreak, and sometimes they make you sad and spoil the mood with their stunted appearance, dry, dying branches. The reason does not lie at all in the fact that they do not look after the plantings, but because mistakes were made in the formation of the garden. Let's try to understand the intricacies of growing a wonderful garden.
Where to begin?
Some believe that the main thing is to buy healthy seedlings, attach them to the site and water abundantly. It turns out that everything is not so simple. So that the planted trees grow well, first you need to find out a number of characteristics:
- soil type (sandy, loamy, clayey, how much humus is in it, what acidity);
- the presence and depth of underground utilities (pipes, cables);
- The proposed plan for future developments;
- proximity to groundwater;
- landscaping goals.
If the priority is given to the harvest, of course, you need to pick up fruit trees.
If the focus is on creating rest areas on the site, visually leveling the relief, hiding any defects, and so on, ornamental plants are ideal. There are also species of fruit trees that have a very beautiful, sometimes bizarre shape, for example,
apple trees, cherries, mulberries with weeping, umbrella or fountain crowns. They will bring a crop, and give the site a peculiar design.
What to plant?
When creating a fruit garden, it is advisable to give preference to plants acclimatized in the area. Exotic, even perfectly correctly planted trees with maximum attention to them and care will grow poorly. This applies not only to southern figs, pomegranates, citrus fruits, which in a strip with a temperate continental climate can only live in greenhouses. Even walnuts, peaches, cherries, apricots have their distribution area and in the more northern regions they either freeze in the winter or simply do not ripen with ripening. In the southern regions, on the contrary, lovers of coolness, such as sea buckthorn, do not take root well. Suffer in the hot climate of birch, willow, spruce.
But especially in this regard, the shrubs are moody. But there are generalists who feel great everywhere. This tree has a lot of advantages and as many varieties, from dwarf mountain pumilio, gnome, mugus to fifty-meter
ordinary pine.Evergreen or deciduous
Gardening is often carried out not to produce crops, but solely to create beauty. In these cases, the owner also becomes a question about which trees to plant on the site, evergreen or deciduous. Both of them have a number of advantages and disadvantages. So, evergreen conifers bloom faded, grow slowly, their year-round identical appearance may begin to bore. But under them in the autumn there is practically no debris, and the needles fill the air with medicinal volatile. Deciduous mostly bloom beautifully, in autumn their foliage glows with fantastic colors, but in winter the trees take on a somewhat depressing appearance. As an alternative, there are deciduous with beautiful branches of yellow, white, orange and red flowers, looking fancy even without leaves. There are also deciduous, all winter decorated with bright tassels of berries. This is a well-known mountain ash, lily of the valley, candy, lilac.
Distance keeping
If the plot is large, the question of the distance between the seedlings is not an acute issue. If the area of the plot is small, to attach to it a lot of things will not work. In order for the planted trees to develop well and not interfere with each other, certain distances must be maintained between them. In addition, seedlings need to be placed correctly in relation to any buildings and communications. Each gardener should be aware of the size of the tree he has acquired in adulthood. Take into account the height, width of the crown, the power of the root system.
Parameters for the main types of trees can be tabulated.
Norms of distances| Object name | The distance to the axis of the tree (m) |
| walls of buildings | 5 |
| retaining wall sole | 3 |
| fence 2 m or more tall | 3 |
| garden path edge | 0.7 |
| poles, overpasses, lights | 4 |
| underground communications | 2 |
| spreading crown trees | 5-7 m from axis to axis |
| with a clonal crown | 2.5-3.5 from axis to axis |
Light and shadow
Plants are photophilous and shade-loving, which must be taken into account when placing them on the site. In addition, when laying an orchard, you need to place seedlings of trees, taking into account their biological characteristics of fruiting, so that the tree does not have to be treated with pesticides during the flowering period of its neighbor. Varietal features also need to be taken into account so that unwanted cross-pollination does not occur. In the north side of the plot, apples and pears are good, in the south - cherries, apricots, peaches. In the center, medium-sized and dwarf crops are planted so that they do not obscure the rest of the trees with their crown. Among ornamental plants, most plants love light.
This is a chic bean bobbin “Golden Rain”, and maples, and junipers, and pines. In the shade, Magnolia, mountain ash, pine and ordinary spruce feel good.
Compatibility
There are a variety of fruit and ornamental trees, photos and names of which can be found in the special literature. But choosing plants for your garden, you need to know whether they get along with each other. The fact is that each tree has its own energy, which favors one green counterparts and suppresses others. Single trees, next to which almost everything grows poorly, include walnut, white acacia, chestnut, viburnum, and fir.
An undesirable neighbor is the American maple. It belongs to parasitic trees, therefore it is impossible to plant it on the site.
Compatibility Chart (Allelopathy)| name | compatible | not compatible |
| Birch | apple tree, cherry, bird cherry, mountain ash | Pine |
| elm | maple, linden | oak |
| pear | maple, poplar, oak, apple tree | walnut, lilac, chestnut, conifers |
| oak | apple tree, linden, maple, pine, cedar | ash, elm |
| spruce | mountain ash, hazelnut | viburnum, fir, chestnut, birch, lilac, maple, barberry, jasmine |
| Linden | apple tree, oak, maple | some conifers |
| Rowan | spruce, cherry, apple tree, pine | walnut, acacia, chestnut, viburnum |
| SOS | apple tree, fox, mountain ash, fir, spruce, oak, cedar, linden | birch, aspen |
| yew | - | walnut, chestnut, fir, viburnum |
Tree planting scheme
How to arrange the trees on the site depends on the chosen design. Fruits are most often planted in rows (linearly). Distances between lines are maintained at least 5-6 meters. You can also arrange seedlings in a checkerboard pattern. In this case, the rows are allowed to be brought a little closer, but not less than 4 meters. During the construction of hedges, stunted trees are used that are more like bushes. The distance between them must be at least 1 meter. In group plantings between seedlings of trees, they stand from 2 meters, and shrubs from 50 cm to 1.5 m (depending on the type of plant). If an open alley is planned, rows of trees are placed no closer than 6-12 meters so that the crowns do not close in the future. When arranging an arched alley (berso), seedlings are located at a distance of 3-5 meters from each other.
Planting seedlings
Many beginner gardeners ask how to plant a tree. There are several recommendations. Firstly, it is desirable that the seedling is young, because for planting (replanting) an adult tree, you will need a special technique. Secondly, it is better if the tree is acquired with a lump of land. With bare roots, the plant always takes root worse, and in some species, such as pine, roots without soil die out within half an hour. Planting begins with digging a hole twice as wide as a lump of seedling land. The depth should be such that the root neck is on the surface. At the bottom, a little fertilized earth is poured, a peg is hammered. In some cases, they arrange drainage from small pebbles or branches. Place a seedling and sprinkle it with earth so that there are no air voids (rammed). Abundantly watered. The best time for planting is considered to be early spring and mid autumn. Only adult conifers are planted in the ground in winter.