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I moved into a house with existing landscaping that's pretty nice but seems a bit lacking in maintenance. I feel capable of doing maintenance work but I'm not sure what needs to be done.

I'm looking for a resource that can:

  1. identify my plants
  2. give me a maintenance plan (eg this should have dead flowers cut off)
  3. recommend additions/changes that I can implement over time

Either an online site where I could upload pictures and get back the info/plan or do local landscaping companies offer such a thing and if so what should I ask for?

John Nestoriak
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If there is a botanical garden in your area, that might be a place to learn about the basic maintenance schedule for your own garden. Ours offers several inexpensive classes a year, taught by volunteer master gardeners who cover the best times to translplant, divide plants, fertilize, and cut back different plants in our area. I will say that the master gardeners I've worked with here tend to be a little more reliant on synthetic chemicals and tend to do more cleanup than I like in my own yard. That may be a regional thing, but regardless, they can help you learn the basics and then you can adjust according to your own gardening philosophies from there.

michelle
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If you are in North America there is usually a local chapter of the Master Gardeners in your area. They are volunteers and are usually quite knowledgable about local conditions.

This site is good for plant identification as waxeagle noted. For a maintenance plan and improvements a landscape company or landscape architect are some of the professionals you can call on depending on the size of your garden and your interest in maintaining and changing it.

kevinskio
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The critical thing is to identify the plants you have, whether you do that by posting on here and asking for ID, or getting a professional to come and ID them for you. Once you know what they are, then finding out how to prune/maintain them properly is easy - cultivation and pruning regimes for plants are usually listed in various entries on Google, or in any good gardening book. Unless you want to pay the professional to produce a diary plan telling you what to do and when to do it.

Bamboo
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