New to northeast gardening

Ok, I have moved from the land of cactus to a whole new world of beautiful flowers/plants/bushes/trees and most everything is green! We bought a home and I of course wanted to plant some of these beautiful things in our yard. Well, I went and bought a whole bunch of perennials and bulbs and planted them and I have since found out there is much more to gardening than sticking something in the ground and watching it come up and be as beautiful as in the picture that was attached to the plant or in the plant catalogs. Thus came the name of the "ineptgardener". I have so many questions I hardly know where to begin.

I realized after obtaining several books on gardening that we desperaterly need a good landscaper here to define gardens, give the front & backyard some texture, color, and visual stimulation throughout the growing seasons, yard art, etc. When discussing my situation here with a good friend she told me about this website and that this is the place to address all my questions and provide me with some excellant advise. So my first questions I guess would be these.

1) what should I be looking for in a landscaper? Should I depend on him/her to provide me with different ideas that pertain to our particular situation and lay of the land here?
2) should I do this in peice meal so to speak and start out small and then expand?
3) should I expect a landscaper to advise me on plants and shrubs, or trees that may need to be cut down or trimmed ect.

I guess the other thing that might help you out in providing advise would be the fact that we are only home 2 days a week usually. However, we do have a very able nephew who lives here with us and would be able to provide some daily attention to gardening matters.

Any advise that any of you can share would be great. I love to here new ideas, so please don't be shy!

Thanks, Betty

If you can, I'd get a landscaper to draw up a plan for the whole yard for you, but if you can't afford to execute the plan all at once then you can work at it a little bit at a time. It's nice to have the whole plan first though if you want the yard to have a nice cohesive feel when you're all done. The landscaper should be able to provide you with plenty of ideas, but it'll help if you have some idea what look you like. I'd pick out some pictures from magazines/books showing landscapes that you like, etc to give them some ideas, then they can figure out plants that'll work in your area and give you the look you want. Since you're not home much, I'd suggest asking for things that are going to be low-maintenance, and consider getting a sprinkler system installed (it'll be easier to install the sprinklers first before you put in all the other landscaping). Even though your nephew's there now it's never a bad idea to plan ahead if there ever comes a time when he's not around, or ends up with a lot of demands from work/school that would prevent him from spending a lot of time taking care of the garden.

Thanks for the great advise ecrane3. I already have many pictures of flower beds that we both really like. I wasn't quit sure if we could really expect a landscaper to draw up plans for the entire yards or not. That's great to know. As for the nephew, I'm afraid he's here to stay! Smile

Hello, Ms Inept, I'm glad to see you at Dave's. I just dropped in to say howdy, as what I know about gardening in the southwest isn't a whole lot of use to you. :-)