What Trees & Shrubs Give Your Yard The Best Look And Feel
The professional team at Faltz Nursery has a strong belief that every tree and shrub sold is one of the best available in Alaska. Trees and shrubs can transform the average lawn if positioned in the correct place and accompanied with complimentary things like flowers and small perennials. Faltz is the best landscape company in Anchorage, Alaska.
Faltz Landscaping and Nursery has been the premier option for residents of Alaska and here are some of our recommendations for the trees and shrubs with the best look and feel.
Evergreen Shrubs
Evergreen shrubs delight gardeners with their unusual textures and year round color.
Birds Nest Spruce
Named for its ‘nest’ appearance, the Birds Nest spruce grows slowly into a mound with a dip in the center. In the spring, it’s bright green needles are an attractive addition to any yard.
Formanek Norway Spruce
This low growing variety of Norway Spruce is revered for its weeping, and creeping habit. If left unstaked, this evergreen will fall gracefully to the ground and spread outward like a mat.
Deciduous Shrubs
Amur Flame Maple
This deciduous shrub is a showstopper in the fall garden, it’s one of the first to change and turns a beautiful orange-red. It grows between 10 to 15 feet tall, has an 8 to 10 foot spread and does best in full sun to partial shade. Don’t be deterred by its mature height, this hardy shrub can be kept small with proper pruning.
Weeping Pea Shrub
This unusual shrub is indeed a member of the pea family and in mid-spring has showy yellow flowers on pendulous branches. The flowers are followed by yellow pods that hold late into the season. The weeping pea shrub is an excellent center-piece for the garden and, once established, can stand some drought and even a bit of neglect.
Evergreen Trees
Weeping Norway Spruce
For something completely different when it comes to landscaping design, consider the weeping Norway spruce. Its weeping habit and bright needles make it the focal point of any garden. It does best in hardiness zones 2 to 8 in full sun or part shade. Another noteworthy weeping tree is its cousin, the weeping blue spruce.
Cork Bark Fir
This beautiful tree, which can grow to 40 feet tall and 30 feet wide, is grown for the texture of its bark, which does resemble cork, its pyramidal habit and its compact, blue-green needles. Grow in full sun to partial shade in hardiness zones 4 to 7.
Deciduous Trees
Crabapples
These showy trees are a beacon of spring here in Alaska. This versatile tree comes in all shapes, sizes and colors. With bright blossoms followed by small crabapples, you can’t go wrong with one of these in your yard.
Paper Birch
This beautiful tree is a staple in our northern environment. With its bright white bark, the Paper birch makes a fantastic addition to the yard. This tree grows as tall as 75 feet in full sun to partial shade. Be sure to check out the Weeping White Birch or Multi Stem Birch for a unique take on one of Alaska’s favorite trees.
If you would like to learn more about trees and shrubs and what the Faltz Landscaping team has give us a call or visit us today.
5 Reasons To Hire A Professional Landscape Architect
Imagine coming home from a hard day at work and being welcomed into your own backyard sanctuary of relaxation. The sights, sounds, and smells of nature gently calm your nerves, soothe your weary bones, and restore your peace of mind.
Your ideal surroundings blend organically with your home and style, to provide years, if not decades, of beauty and pleasure. Creating such a space is not an easy task, and can take a lifetime to accomplish for even the most enthusiastic gardener.A good environmental design team will transform your unique ideas into a plan that speeds up the clock, so you can get to the important job of enjoying it. Five reasons to hire a landscape architect include:
Feasible Design Your landscaping design team will assess your property and help you decide what materials and features work best for you, your property, and your budget. They should be aware of any restrictions, laws, or required permits regarding your project.
- Prepping the Land Achieving the perfect yard may require digging, trenching, and moving the earth around. Consideration must be given for usage, traffic, weather patterns, drainage, and the type of plants desired. A landscaping team can bring in the big equipment and have your property beautifully sculpted in a matter of days.
- All That Hard Work Setting brick or stone, building walls and benches, installing piping systems for sprinklers and water features, installing lighting systems, preparing planting beds, and planting dozens of flowers or trees is time consuming and back breaking! Leaving it to the pros leaves you free to move forward with the finer details of personalizing your outdoor lifestyle.
- Instant Beauty More than just lawn care providers, professional landscaping services offer a full range of water features, fire features, seating, shading, and lighting, as well as plants and trees that will thrive in your specific climate. They can offer a mix of annual flowers for instant color and perennial plants that will provide color, interest, or food for years to come.
- Lasting Results Proper planning, construction, and planting will create an environment that endures. You will notice immediate aesthetic improvement, but the real reward will blossom with time. It equates to money well spent, from a personal standpoint or for resale value.
Letting a professional landscaping design service handle the dirty work gives you the freedom and opportunity to fine tune the details of outdoor living that reflect your personality. From concept to completion, Faltz Landscaping provides an amazing array of options to enhance your outdoor experience. You can choose how involved you want to be in the planting, care, and maintenance of your surroundings. Their knowledgeable and dedicated team will take care of the rest.
Rock mulch or bark mulch? Which is best for you?
When doing any type of landscaping design, it is important to consider the materials you will be using. There are two materials that are commonly misused, which are landscaping rocks and landscaping mulch. Understanding the differences between these two materials will greatly improve the quality of the landscape.
Bark Mulch
Bark mulch is often used by landscaping services because it is very cost effective. Bark mulch is also lightweight and easy to apply. It is commonly used as a weed barrier around homes and within gardens as well. It repels weeds and also holds moisture so you don’t have to water plants as often. Additionally, it is commonly used in gardens because it breaks down in soil rather quickly. As the bark mulch breaks down, it will also add organic matter to the soil.
There are several reasons why bark mulch may not be the most ideal for a particular landscaping design. The first reason is that it decomposes rather quickly, and although the decomposing material adds nutrients to the soil, it needs to be replaced every few years. Another reason that it isn’t always chosen for a particular design, is because the bark fades after exposure to sunlight, and the newly added bark mulch may be a different color. Last, being lightweight causes the bark mulch to blow away, and can get washed away during heavy downpours.
Rock Mulch
Landscaping services use rock mulch as a long-term type of landscape. Since it is heavier and doesn’t decompose as quick as bark mulch, it will last longer in the area that it is placed. Rock mulch is generally more expensive, depending on the size and type of rock. The size can range from rocks that are pea-sized, all the way up to golf ball sized. It is also used because there are many different colors of rock mulch. The variety of colors allows the landscaping design to have more options.
On the other hand, rock mulch is not ideal for certain types of landscapes as well. In areas where there is a lot of trees that will shed their leaves, it is not ideal. The leaves will cover the rocks and they will be difficult to remove. Next, if a weed barrier isn’t installed underneath the layer of rock mulch, weeds can quite easily grow. Last, rock mulch is difficult to move and rearrange once installed. This can make rearranging plants within a landscape pretty difficult.
Overall, landscaping rocks and landscaping mulch both have situations in which they are better for use. Consider your budget, location, surrounding environment, and types of plants within your landscape before deciding which to use.
How To Add Color To Your Landscape In Anchorage, Alaska
If you have just moved to Anchorage and are thinking of hiring landscaping services you are probably wondering what sorts of plant could possibly thrive in this climate. You may be pleasantly surprised to learn that the USDA has placed Anchorage in the 3a-4b hardiness zones, which means that many landscaping plants can do very well here. Here are some hardy plants that can add color to any Anchorage garden:
Achillea
This plant is also called the yarrow and produces gorgeous flowers in colors of white,pink, yellow, orange and red in the summer. It also has beautiful, fern-like foliage. Achillea is a perennial that can grow from one to three feet tall and is excellent for a place where the soil is average to poor but well-drained. Common Yarrow (Achillea millefolium) can be seen along our highways and roads as it is frequently used for erosion control. Even better, this tough plant thrives in full shade to full sun and can tolerate more than a little neglect.
Serviceberry
The serviceberry is a large shrub or a tree that can grow from 15 to 40 feet high. It is an excellent landscape plant because it provides beauty in all seasons. It has a beautiful bark that stands out in the winter and produces masses of white flowers in the spring. When it comes to landscaping color, leaves start as purple-gray, deepen to dark green in the summer and change to yellow and red in the fall. The fruit, which also appears in the fall, is blueberry-like and attracts birds. Serviceberry prefers well-drained, acidic soil and is good for a woodland garden.
Aquilegia (Columbine)
This perennial plant is a fantastic addition to any garden. From April to August this hardy plant produces many blooms. A variety of colors are available; red, orange, pink, purple, and blue and the dark green foliage makes the bright blooms really pop. Columbine prefers moist, well drained soil and full sun to partial shade. Be sure to check out the dwarf varieties!
Dogwood
This colorful shrub is a favorite of gardeners and can grow well in climates that are far colder than Anchorage’s. Like serviceberries, these landscaping plants provide interest all year with their bright red bark, fall foliage, flowers and fruit. Dogwoods like moist, well-drained acidic soil and do well in full sun to partial shade, they have endless uses in the garden. From hedges and foundation plantings to a stand alone shrub, this versatile plant is a cold climate staple.
Daylilies
There are so many varieties of this durable flower that it can be hard to choose which one is best for the garden. That is where landscaping services are handy. The blooms, borne on structures called scapes instead of stems, range in color from lemon yellow to maroon red to carmine to orange to melon pink. It is true that the flowers only last a day, but there are so many of them that the gardener won’t notice. The landscaping color provided by daylilies is complemented by the long, grass-like leaves. Daylilies do well in full sun to partial shade and soil that’s moist and well-drained.
All your landscaping needs are near you.
Faltz Landscaping offers the best landscaping services and nursery in the area.