Vintage or just Dated?

Vintage looks are au courant, but it’s a fine line between "vintage" and "dated." Certain plants and garden sculptures are vintage or heirloom, but landscapes are either up to date or out of date. You can do a little or a lot to update your place. More on that later. A few dated looks:

• Beds of all one plant, made popular during the Victorian bedding craze. Wake me when it’s over. Wait, Queen Victoria has left the throne.
  
• Shaggy junipers by the foundation. Sure, it’s low maintenance and evergreen, but it’s also a dust and pollen catcher and cover for burglars.
  
• A variety of hybrid tea roses in a row. Cut flowers from the florist roses aren’t that expensive anymore. And there are so many great shrub roses that make better garden plants.
  

How to update your look:
The annual beds are the easiest. Find a plan to suit the site in a book or catalog and copy it. The junipers are much harder, especially if they’ve been around since the Eisenhower administration. When my parents and I mucked them out at their place, and finally got down to the stump, my dad dug down deep and split the stump with an ax. It took a lot of elbow grease, but it made room for a mixed border that’s now a show stopper. Sprucing up a row of roses is easier. You can try two different plans. Plan one: move the roses so that they are in clusters of three, keeping the most similar ones together. Plant the hybrid teas 18" to 24" apart. Plan two: kill or dig up the grass around the roses and put in some companion plants that have small flowers or nice foliage. Admit it—you didn’t like trimming and mowing the grass around the roses.