Landscape Design in Wooded Areas

Minnesota is home to 17.7 million acres of forestland. With about a third of the whole state covered in trees, there’s a decent chance your property borders on a wooded area—yes, even in Minneapolis . While these forests can be absolutely beautiful, they can also make landscaping tricky. In this post, owner of KG Landscape, Kent Gliadon, weighed in on how to design a landscape to make your home almost feel like part of the forest.

The first step is to figure out where you’d like to begin transitioning from managed lawn to unmanaged forest. You want to literally draw a line in the sand (or, you know, soil). Once you decide upon a spot, you’ll want edging to delineate this area. This can be done with a shovel cut (using a spade to dig up the existing grass to a depth of about 6 inches) or by laying  edging pavers  .

As with some other landscaping projects , you’ll want to plant from shortest to tallest. Start with a ground cover plant(this also has the benefit of spreading out as the garden matures, covering any open spaces). We most often use sedum or vinca. Sedums have thick, waxy leaves, and come in many varieties. The vinca has softer leaves, but only a few color options. Using a ground cover also means less weeding down the road, as the plants you want will outcompete the ones you don’t.