How should you plant shrubs for a beautiful Texas landscape? Hint: no straight lines.

In more than 50 years of watching my fellow Texans landscape their homes I’ve decided that probably 80% of the new shrubs are planted from mid-March through mid-June. Unfortunately, I’ve also observed that many of those shrubs are planted improperly. I’d like to offer a few basic pointers that might make any spring renovations you’re making a bit more successful.

Start with good bed design. Size is important. Things need to be kept in proportion. One-story houses need beds that vary from 5 to 7 feet wide, with the widest portions wrapping around corners and broadening out at the entryway. Two-story houses, because of their greater masses, deserve deeper beds — to 10 to 12 feet wide.

Curved beds look more natural. If your goal is to have your landscape look like a North Texas forested meadow, plant in gently curved beds. Avoid long, straight rows that repeat the lines of your house. Lay a flexible garden hose out on a warm, sunny day and determine a pleasing contour for the bed.

If there is sod inside that boundary, either dig it and replant it somewhere in your yard or apply a glyphosate-only herbicide precisely with a pump sprayer to kill it without contaminating the soil. That spray would need to wait until late April, once the grass has started growing and is essentially all green. Give the weedkiller two weeks to kill the grass and you’ll be able to start working the bed.

Choose your shrubs very carefully. Let ultra-dependable evergreens make up the framework of your landscape design. Don’t worry so much about whether they bloom, since flowers only last a couple of weeks. You want plants that look great all year long. The bulk of your shrubs should be dark green types that hold their leaves all year. Then you can come back with focal spots of flowering shrubs or highly variegated types for little pockets of drama.

Avoid faddish plants that come and go. Ornamental grasses, for example, are not shrubs. They’re brown half of the year, and brown soon becomes boring. Bright yellow plants look like they need iron, and too many red-leafed plants can draw attention away from your house and to the landscape itself.

Know each species’ winter hardiness. You’ll see it described by a USDA Hardiness Zone. The most recent map (2012) placed the Metroplex and suburbs in Zone 8, but we have had two winters since then that have been much colder than that. The prior map from 1990 that had us in Zone 7 is, in my opinion, probably more accurate.

The best landscapes have only five to seven species of shrubs visible from any one location. If you use fewer types the garden becomes boring. If you use more it looks jumbled.

Know where the focal point of your landscape is. For the front yard it’s almost always the front door. Taper your plantings from tall plants at the corners down to shorter plants near the entry. In doing so you’ll be creating a visual “funnel” that will draw your guests’ eyes right where you want them. Then, if desired, you can add an accent point of drama such as a tree-form crape myrtle or holly 10 or 15 feet out from the door and just within that curved bed.

Shrubs look best if they’re planted in groupings and clusters rather than in straight rows. Again, your goal is the natural look, and shrubs in nature are seldom seen in straight ranks. Plant them in groupings where they’ll be seen as individuals, but where they’ll work as a team. Space them far enough apart that they can eventually grow together without crowding one another.

Consider each shrub’s texture as you fit them together like pieces of a puzzle. Textures are determined by leaf size, growth form and other features, and you want an attractive combination of textures to make the shrub bed visually interesting.

My last suggestion is that you always buy from a Texas Certified or Master Certified Nursery Professional. You’ll find them at member nurseries of the Texas Nursery and Landscape Association. For the most part those are going to be independent retail garden centers where you can talk to full-time nursery experts.

The last question you should ask before you hand them your card is, “Is any of the plants in my cart a mistake?” Let them own part of your decision. Relying on that professional help will be one of the biggest game changers you can make.

You can hear Neil Sperry on KLIF 570AM on Saturday afternoons 1-3 p.m. and on WBAP 820AM Sunday mornings 8-10 a.m. Join him at www.neilsperry.com and follow him on Facebook.

This story was originally published March 14, 2022 at 5:30 AM.