Native Plants

Q. Who is Mr. Smarty Plants?

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Saturday - April 28, 2012

From: Mansfield, OH
Region: Mid-Atlantic
Topic: Rain Gardens, Planting, Erosion Control, Privacy Screening
Title: Construction problems on site in Mansfield OH
Answered by: Barbara Medford

QUESTION:

Last year we had a rectangular above ground pool put in the person who "leveled" for use did a terrible job and basically dug a huge hole for us to put our pool in. The back side of the pool is about 2 feet from a drop off that was dug into our yard and the aides have a good 4 feet. We plan to plant all around this and add ground cover that will grow along side the pool and up the 'drop off' walls. The landscape is terrible. I am looking for large very hardy easy maintenance plants that can withstand very damp soil (from being in a pit and beside the pool) the drainage is terrible. We are in Ohio zone 5- I thought about hostas as it seems nothing can kill them but wanted more options. I want low maintenance, quick spreading and hard to kill but somewhat pretty and not bee magnets. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks so much

ANSWER:

We are sorry, it sounds like you really had bad luck. Perhaps you can still get some sort of correction to the errors that were made; it's too bad you didn't catch them before the job was finished. This is frankly not a problem that plants can solve. We are having difficulty even envisioning the situation well enough to recommend some plants. We did, however, find a previous Mr. Smarty Plants answer on plants for a moist area in Ohio. If at all possible, it would help enormously if you could engage a landscape architect who could actually see the site, and make some recommendations for improving the situation. In the long run, that would probably be less expensive than for you to have people hundreds of miles away try to guess what would work where.

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Saturday - April 28, 2012

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