Measuring Your Space and Getting Real About Square Footage
Okay. You've figured out your sun and your shade and you know which wall bakes everything alive by 2 PM. Now we need actual numbers. Not a guess, not "oh it's about that big." Numbers.
Honestly, this is the lesson people want to skip. It feels like homework instead of gardening. But I've watched too many people buy plants first and measure never, and then they're standing in their yard in May with a wagon full of stuff from the nursery trying to figure out where any of it goes. Let's not do that this year.
Grab a tape measure and just go outside
You need a tape measure, something to write on, and about twenty minutes. That's it. If you've got one of those long fabric ones for sewing, don't use that, it stretches. Use the metal kind from the garage.
Walk your bed or your strip or whatever space we're working with, and measure the actual length and width. If it's not a clean rectangle, which most of our yards aren't, break it into rough rectangles and triangles and measure those separately. You're not building a cabinet, you don't need it perfect to the inch. You need it close.
Multiply length times width for each chunk, add them up, and now you've got your square footage. Write it down somewhere you'll actually find again. I keep mine in the notes app on my phone because my binder is at home and my yard is not.
Now subtract what's already spoken for
Here's the part people forget. Your total square footage is not all plantable space. Take out:
- Any path or spot where you walk
- The area under your hose bib where you're always going to be standing with a hose or a can
- A few feet along the house foundation if you've got sprinklers or drainage going on there
- Anywhere a downspout dumps water, because that's its own weird little microclimate we'll talk about another time
What's left is your real number. For most of you that real number is going to be smaller than you thought. That's fine. That's actually good news, because it means you're not going to overbuy.
Why this matters more for drought tolerant stuff than regular gardening
With a regular water-hungry bed, if you jam plants in too close, you can sort of fudge it with extra watering and deadheading and it limps along okay. Xeric plants don't forgive that the same way. A lot of them want airflow around their base. Crowd them and you get mildew, rot, and one plant muscling out its neighbors by August.
Which brings me to the raised bed my husband built me. Von built it out of scrap cedar he had lying around, without me even asking him to, and the corners are just slightly out of square. I mean you can see it if you know to look. And I love that bed more than I'd love a perfectly mitered one I paid money for, because it's where I trial new plants before I trust them in the front yard where everybody can see. But here's the thing about that bed: it's exactly the size it is. Von didn't build it extra big so I could cram more in. It's the size the space allowed, and I plant it accordingly, every single year. I don't fight it.
That's the mindset I want you in. Your space is the size it is. Plant for that space, not for the space you wish you had.
Do the math on mature size, not nursery size
This is where I really need you to slow down. Look at the plant tag, or better, look it up, for the plant's mature width. Not how big it is in the one-gallon pot. How big it gets in three years.
I learned this one the hard way. My very first drought tolerant purchase was a flat of twelve plants I grabbed on impulse because they were pretty and on sale. I planted all twelve in a tidy little row with zero spacing plan. By August, three of them had completely swallowed the other nine. I kept every one of those plant tags in a Ziploc bag afterward, just to remind myself. I still have that bag.
So for every square foot you calculated, start dividing it up by what a mature plant actually needs, radius-wise, not what looks good the day you plant it. It will look sparse and a little sad the first year. That's normal and correct. Xeric plants are slower out of the gate and then they take off. Give them room now so you're not ripping things out in two years, which, trust me, is a worse afternoon than measuring was.
A word on soil while you're out there
While you've got your tape measure out, take a minute and just look at your dirt. Is it the good stuff from a bag somebody dumped in years ago, or is it the native junk that came with the lot? Don't go improve it yet. Just notice it. We'll talk soil next, and I promise you it matters less than you think, in a good way.
Before next time
Get your real, subtracted-down square footage written somewhere you'll find it, and bring it with you. We're building your actual planting layout soon and I don't want anybody doing math in their head at the table.