Newsletter Articles
Should You Replace Old Plants In Your Tired Garden
Written by Kelsey W.
Creating a beautiful home can mean adding green friends to your patio, yard, or space, but the trees you grow, plants you care for, and flowers you tend to might not always look so fresh and vibrant.
Just like humans and other living things, plants have a life expectancy, and you might have some plants in your yard or home that have started to look a little wrinkly or aged.
Even the towering, majestic trees that give your family shade have an expiration date, and there will come a time when those living things will retire from this earth and be replaced by the next generation.
You may have plants or trees around your home that have reached a point where they’ve become a little gray, and it might be time to consider replacing them with new plantings.
How do you tell when it’s time to replace a plant? Let’s talk about plant life expectancy and what to do when it’s time to choose new plants for your home.
Common Life Expectancies for Plants Around Your Home
It’s easy to think that the plant you put into the ground or into a pot will outlive everyone and everything around you as long as it’s given the right amount of water and light, but plants of all kinds do have varying life spans.
In many cases, trees have the longest life spans, and potted plants have shorter ones, but that’s not always the case. Some potted plants can indeed stick around for many years. For example, succulents can live for decades in pots sitting on a balcony or on a windowsill.
The succulent you had in your college dorm room or that your mom had sitting in the window in the kitchen could live happily in a pot until you’re celebrating your silver wedding anniversary. In fact, there are even some plants with a reputation for outliving just about everything.
For example, some types of sedum or stonecrop plants will grow and spread and seemingly never die as long as they’re not taken over by a predator like mealy bugs or are impacted by a serious case of root rot. For a time, some of these plants were referred to as “life-everlasting” plants due to their life spans.
Other plants have quite a short life span, even if they’re considered perennials that will bloom for a few seasons. Often referred to as “short-lived,” these perennials will only bloom for about three years before you need to replace them. Examples include columbines and coral bells.
Signs Your Plants Are Tired
If you just recently put a plant into the ground and it’s started losing leaves or wilting, there’s a chance that it has a disease or that you should make a change in the way you’re caring for the plant.
However, if you’re absolutely sure you’re doing everything you should for the plant, you might be facing a life expectancy issue. Just like people, plants get tired, and it becomes tough for them to fully utilize their resources to create new blooms, leaves, and growth as they age.
Despite your best efforts, an old plant may start to wilt and drop its leaves, or you might find that it’s no longer growing as fully as it once did during the growing season. The leaves might start to turn yellow or look burned even though you’re positive they shouldn’t.
As long as you’re able to rule out problems like pests and that the plants aren’t in the wrong spot (like they’re getting too much or too little sunlight), it might be time to permanently retire the plant, especially if you can confirm it’s not a spacing issue where a plant has outgrown a pot.
Should You Always Opt for Long-Lived Plants?
You may assume that choosing plants that will outlive you and your family will be the easiest option for a beautiful and self-sustaining garden, but there are some benefits to choosing plants that you might need to replace every few years or every decade.
One of the most invigorating ways to improve the appearance of your home is with an update to your landscaping, and you can update all the plants around your home every four or five years whenever the annuals and short-lived perennials have reached their end point.
Although it’s possible to coax annuals to return for multiple years in Southern California, even those plants can get tired after a while. Refreshing the landscape around your home is a fun project, especially when you get to choose a new color scheme or plant style for your new yard.
However, if you know that your lifestyle won’t allow for repeat visits to your yard to update your plants, opting for a design that will last many years or even decades is also possible, especially when you choose Southern California favorites like cactuses and palm trees.
If you take a drive around some of SoCal’s older neighborhoods, you’ll often see cactuses growing that have definitely seen many decades of growth, having been planted a few generations ago. You may find it quite rewarding to bring a young cactus into your home and watch it grow for many years.
Saying Goodbye to the Old Generation of Plants
Let’s assume that some of the plants in your yard have started to look a bit hunched or have just simply stopped responding well to regular care and feeding. While you may feel a pang of guilt removing these plants from your home, you don’t necessarily need to toss them in the green bin.
Updating your landscaping with new plants is an excellent opportunity to start turning your old plants into mulch or compost to feed and protect your new plants. In most cases, removing the plants at the end of the growing season or in the fall will help you turn them into compost for the next spring.
One important part of the process is to make sure you don’t introduce any diseased or sickly plant parts into your compost pile. If you have any plants that are diseased or have pests, make sure that you dispose of those plants in the green bin rather than keeping them around.
You have a few options for ensuring the old plants aren’t wasted. One option is to cut them up into small pieces and simply roll them into the soil, where you’ll place new plants in the spring. Over the winter, they’ll decompose under the surface of the soil.
You can also set up an official compost pile if you have enough room for it. The pile you create can enrich the soil you use for planting in the spring, but it’s important to make sure the compost remains free of pests and disease while the old plant parts are decomposing.
Introducing New Plants to Your Home
You may want to start exploring new options for plants in the winter before you actively start adding new plantings to your home. You can work with a SoCal landscape designer to create a new look for your yard, or you can conduct a little research on introducing new plants to your home.
Renewing your landscaping is also an excellent time to consider bringing native plants to your home that will align harmoniously with the native ecology of Southern California, as well as help reduce the water requirements of your yard.
As far as life expectancies go, snake plants and jade plants are ideal when you want plants that will probably outlast you and everyone you know. Plus, each of these plants will fare wonderfully whether placed indoors or outdoors in Southern California. Just make sure the snake plants have some shade.
If you’re keen on creating a garden that you’ll continuously update year after year, some ideal options include marigolds and petunias, each of which thrive in full sunlight and offer excellent summer blooms. You can employ these plants beautifully in big bunches in flowerbeds or pots.
Visit Green Thumb Nursery to Renew Your Gardens
Is the ornamental tree you have growing on your porch looking a little worse for wear? Are the perennials in the flower bed not looking their best despite getting loads of food, water, and care? Is it time to get some awesome new blooms for your home? Visit Green Thumb Nursery for all the advice and information you need to renew and refresh your landscaping and the outdoor beauty of your home.
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