Small Can Be Beautiful, Too, If You Plan the Right Way

Not everyone in Orange County has the space or the budget to accommodate the kind of landscaping James and Terri Gick lavished on their Coto de Caza home.

But the same impact can be achieved on a smaller scale, says David Lee, the Placentia landscape contractor who spent nearly a year working on the Gicks’ landscaping project.

Granted, the kind of landscaping Lee talks about isn’t going to happen with a few visits to the local discount home improvement store’s garden department, but a lot can be accomplished with some patience, budgeting and common sense.

Lee’s first rule is his most important: “Don’t try to get a $1-million job for $1,000 or you’ll end up with nothing. If $1,000 is what you have, then go for a good $1,000 job.”

Better yet, Lee suggests, break the landscaping into phases that can be installed over several years to spread the costs out. If you want a lot of masonry and brickwork, get that done first and put the plants in next year, he suggests.

The most important part of any landscape scheme?

“The foundation,” says Lee. “Make the foundation strong, because that’s what supports the bricks and the slopes and the trees and everything else. If you can’t afford everything you might want, spend the money you have preparing and grading the soil and putting in drainage and irrigation.”

Other tips from Lee:

* When using masonry as part of a landscape plan, keep to the same theme. Don’t mix brick and stone and tile and concrete. Too many different materials make for a busy, distracting look.

* Soften the hardscape with plants. “You want a soft look. Hardscape works best when you have to look hard to see it,” Lee said.

* Take pains to match colors. If your roof is tile, try to get bricks in a shade that matches or at least complements. And if you buy material in small batches, use the same manufacturer each time so the colors don’t change.

* Plant for water conservation, putting material with similar watering requirements together and then spend money on a good, zoned irrigation system with sophisticated timing controls that allow you to water each zone independently of the others.

* Get a professional’s advice on your watering schedule.