Many home garden supply centers and landscape developers over plant and overcrowd to give your new landscape the 'fully developed' look! While this may have fantastic 'looks' appeal right away, it's going to be a headache to maintain and may well require the care by a professional.
If you do your homework, you can select plants of smaller size, at substantially lower price and plant them yourself. Granted it may take most of a season or a couple of years for trees and shrubs to reach comparable size. This will give you and your plants a chance to acclimate to your yard and local environment.
During this time you are able to grow with your landscape and plants, shaping them to their natural size and develop respect about how they fill your landscape picture. If you have existing plants, trees and shrubs that you'd like to keep, but they are a bit large, you can do, or hire corrective pruning to bring them into manageable condition.
Unless you've had some training or experience in corrective pruning, seek advice from someone who knows. In most cases, don't take all of the plant material off all at once. Use the hand pruners and not the hedge trimmer to prune! In most cases you want to reduce the size, but not the shape of the plant. The season that you prune, how you make the cuts and what you do with the trimmings all vary with the plant and local guidelines and regulations.
Some plants need to be pruned when they are dormant. Others can be pruned all season long while others have a small window of opportunity to prune them. Since plants are organic, many municipalities and waste handlers have special requirements to prepare trimmings for disposal. Except for woody branches most pruned vegetative clippings can be successfully made into compost or mulch right at hour house.
Current economy may dictate that you live in your current residence or postpone making big adjustments in your landscape. Take the time to asses the options. Regular maintenance reduces the amount of severe pruning necessary to keep shrubs, trees, annuals and perennials looking their best.
