Landscape Plan for Wet Areas

If you have a soggy spot in the yard where nothing you plant does well, you may be tempted to give up and leave it unplanted. "I don't want to go through the trouble of installing drainage or re-grading the site," perhaps you're saying to yourself. The good news is, you may not need to go to such lengths. But what you will need to do is develop a landscape plan specifically for wet areas.

In the sample landscape plan for wet areas pictured above, the pond serves as a backdrop for three rows of plants. The planting is "layered": i.e., the tallest plants reside in the back, the shortest in the front, and the mid-sized in between.

Some of these specimens aren't available at every nursery. But if you conduct an Internet search for "wildflower society" followed by the name of your region, you may find someone who specializes in the sale of native plants in your area.

The wetland plants shown in the landscape plan are listed below, row by row:

• Back row:
  Arrowwood viburnum shrubs
• Middle row:
  Swamp milkweed, which is a good butterfly plant
• Elephant ear plants
• Front row:
  Wild bergamot and
• Marsh marigolds, both of which I cover in my article on water garden plants.

This sample landscape plan was drawn with the landscaping software named, "Realtime Landscaping Pro."

If you observe wetlands in your region, you can acquire enough ideas to develop a landscape plan.