Best Landscaping Tips from Readers

Make allowances for future plans. When we bought our home, the first thing we did was put up a stone and wood fence. Three years later, when we could afford a swimming pool, we had to bust up huge sections of the fence to accommodate a backhoe. Had we thought ahead, we would have chosen a fence with easily removed panels or an extra wide gate.

-–Jean C., New York

If cats are using your flower beds for their litter box, sprinkle coffee grounds in the beds. The odor is pleasant to us but obnoxious to cats. It will keep them away.

-–Jennifer N., Ohio 

Fruit trees are a good idea on paper: you’ve got the tree that fills a niche in your landscaping scheme, and you get fruit as a bonus. Don’t be fooled. Fruit trees are high maintenance–without regimented, poisonous spraying of insecticide you’ll be left with fruit unfit for eating. After two summers of mowing through mounds of festering, worm-riddled plums and peaches littering the grass, you’ll be sorry you didn’t opt for that dogwood or redbud.

-–Danny W., Texas

To keep deer from eating your valuable plants, you can shake ground red pepper on the foliage, set up a motion-sensor sprinkler to blast water at them, or hang aluminum pie plates in trees to sway in the breeze. But none of it will work.

-–Fred T., New Jersey