101 pretty good ideas from Home & Garden Television

A continuing compendium of tips and tricks from Home & Garden Television:

We can all learn from each other's garden mistakes. Here are a few that come to mind:

-- Wrong plant in the wrong place:

Know the conditions your prospective garden additions are going to want -- light, soil, water -- before you plant. And as the landscape changes, note whether you need to move something to a more suitable location.

-- Subsoil on top:

Builders and developers sometimes carve off the topsoil from a site, leaving only the subsoil. When possible, work out an agreement with the builder at the beginning to preserve the topsoil or to restore at least 6 inches of topsoil back to the site.

-- Out of proportion:

Accommodate the expected mature size of a plant when you plant it. That applies to girth as well. If you're planting broad-beamed trees and shrubs such as dogwoods and large viburnums near the house or driveway, be sure to allow for their eventual expansion. Don't plant them in areas where they won't have room to grow.

-- Topping trees:

Many homeowners get sold on the erroneous notion that topping trees saves branch drop and maybe roof damage. The truth is, removing a tree's crown sets the tree up for rapid decay and decline.

-- Too much busy-ness:

When you're an enthusiastic gardener, it's fun to have one of each thing, but try to congregate your experiments into one area. Or find a way to pull the look together by repeating some of the same colors and plants in other parts of the landscape.

-- Too much of the same thing:

Besides being monotonous, too many of the same type of plant sets up a monoculture, which may then become susceptible to an invasion of pests. How much more fun to have a selection of viburnums, hollies, elaeagnus, leucothoe and other flowering and fruiting shrubs that will provide multiseason interest and feed (or house) the birds.

-- Planting too deeply:

If your tree looks more like a telephone pole, it's planted too deeply. Plant all trees and shrubs at the same level as they grew in the nursery.

(Courtesy of Marie Hofer, gardening editor on HGTV.com.)

(For thousands of other ideas visit www.hgtv.com. Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.)