Planting & garden beds in New Gloucester, Maine.
Foundation plantings in New Gloucester often start from nothing. Roughly a third of the town's homes were built in 2000 or later, according to Census estimates, and many were finished with a strip of bark mulch and a few shrubs along the front. Beds that actually suit the house and the ground are usually a later project.
We plant foundation beds and perennial borders and finish them with clean-edged mulch. The work here starts from two local facts: the cold on the 2023 hardiness map, and a soil survey that changes from sand to clay within a short walk.
Zone 5b, inland
The 2023 USDA map puts New Gloucester in zone 5b, with average annual minimums of -15 to -10°F. That rules out some shrubs sold as hardy near Casco Bay and favors proven northern choices: native highbush blueberry, winterberry, inkberry, ninebark and serviceberry for structure, and perennials like coneflower, catmint, sedum and daylily for the long season.
Plants near the driveway also need to tolerate plowed snow piled on them. The town's aquifer overlay limits de-icers to sand with no more than 10% salt, which is easier on bed edges than straight salt.
Matching plants to the soil series
Hinckley and Windsor loamy sands on New Gloucester's outwash terraces are excessively drained. Beds there need compost worked in and plants that handle dry spells, and mulch does real work holding moisture. Lamoine and Scantic silts are the opposite: somewhat poorly to poorly drained, firm and slow to warm. There, raising the bed a few inches with loam and choosing plants that accept wet feet, like red-twig dogwood or winterberry, keeps roots alive.
On Paxton till, the dense layer 20 to 40 inches down can perch water after heavy rain. Digging planting holes wide rather than deep, and avoiding a bathtub of amended soil in firm subsoil, helps drainage.
Pests and plant material
The Maine Forest Service quarantines covering New Gloucester include hemlock woolly adelgid, which regulates hemlock nursery stock, and white pine blister rust, which regulates currants and gooseberries. Those rules affect what can be brought in and planted. Hemlock hedges are a harder choice now than they once were; arborvitae, spruce or native shrubs are often a better fit for a foundation screen.
The town requires pesticide use to follow state Department of Agriculture standards. A bed designed with the right plants and good soil rarely needs spraying.
Plantings · Mulch · Garden Design
How we handle planting & garden beds
We build planting beds that look better every year — hardy perennials and shrubs matched to your site, finished with clean-edged mulch and stone accents. From single foundation beds to full hillside plantings.
See the full planting & garden beds service page or everything we do in New Gloucester, Maine.
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Planting & Garden Beds in New Gloucester? Let's talk.
Tell us about your property and we will walk it with you — free estimates, straight answers, stonework guaranteed to hold its lines.
Mon–Sat 7:00am – 5:00pm · Based in Cumberland, Maine