8 Drawn-to-Scale Garden Plans, Native Plants, USDA Zones 7b-8a (PDF Set)

Eight drawn, to-scale planting plans for USDA Zones 7b-8a. Fifty-three pages. Two hundred and thirty-two plants across thirty-five species, every one with its hardiness zone, mature size and light requirement looked up individually.

Bought separately these are $144. Together they are $49.

THE EIGHT PLANS

1. Dry Shade Garden - 24 x 15 ft bed under a mature tree, 29 plants
2. Rain Garden - 18 x 14 ft basin, 18 plants placed by how much standing water each will take
3. Deer-Resistant Border - 32 x 15 ft sunny border, 6 species that survived corroboration
4. Pollinator Garden - 26 x 12 ft border, 12 species sequenced by bloom month with a coverage chart
5. Cottage Garden - 24 x 15 ft sunny border, the cottage look with a plant list built for Piedmont heat
6. Front Yard Foundation Planting - 30 x 10 ft house front, 14 plants and the arithmetic behind that number
7. Slope and Bank - 40 x 22 ft bank, every species carrying NC State's own erosion documentation
8. Winter Interest - 42 x 24 ft border built for November to March

THEY ARE NOT EIGHT VERSIONS OF THE SAME BORDER

Dry shade under an oak and a basin that ponds after every storm are opposite problems, and they share almost no plants. Each plan is built for a different site condition, and each one opens with a page telling you exactly what it assumes about your site - so you can rule it out before you spend anything on plants.

WHAT EVERY PLAN HAS

- Drawn to scale at mature spread. Every circle is the plant at full grown width, not its nursery-pot size. Nothing overlaps at maturity in any of these drawings.
- A USDA hardiness zone on every single plant, read off that plant's own page in the NC State Extension Plant Toolbox rather than inferred from a regional list.
- A site-assumptions page at the front.
- A page on what I left out and why. Every plan has one, and it is usually the most useful page in the document.

WHAT YOU DOWNLOAD

- ALL-8-PLANS-single-file.pdf - the complete 56-page set in one document
- Individual-Plans-8.zip - the same eight plans as separate PDFs
- 00-START-HERE.pdf - the index, with a table telling you which plan is for which problem

EXAMPLES OF THE HONEST PAGES

No lavender in the cottage plan: printed for Zones 5a-9b, so it fits on paper, but Piedmont clay in August gives it neither the drainage nor the dry air it needs. Little bluestem is out of the slope plan: nine documented resistances and erosion is not one of them. Three commonly recommended deer plants are out of the deer border because they contradicted my own guide.

WHERE THESE APPLY

Drawn from USDA Zones 7b-8a - the North Carolina Piedmont, where I work. The band also covers upstate South Carolina, north Georgia, middle and east Tennessee, central and southern Virginia, and the warm Piedmont edge into Maryland. Most species run from Zone 3a or 4a through 8b or 9b, so the plantings travel considerably further. Check the zone column in each schedule against your own zone.

WHAT THIS IS NOT

Not designs for your property - I have not seen your site, grade, soil or drainage. Not engineered drawings. Not a stormwater design. I am a licensed North Carolina landscape contractor (CL.1872) and hold NCSU Stormwater SCM certification #5970. I am not a professional engineer and not a registered landscape architect.

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