How to Landscape Around a Pool | eHow

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By selecting the rights plants in the landscape near your swimming pool, you will assure safety for pool users and minimize pool maintenance. Here are some tips.

Consider container plants, which are easy to tend, replace and rearrange. One additional advantage: Frost-sensitive container plants can be moved indoors for the winter and brought outdoors again the next spring.

Plant trees and shrubs that won't hang over the pool because nearly every variety will drop something into it - leaves, petals, pollen.

Forgo plants with destructive roots. Mulberries and cottonwoods are taboo for this reason.

Move the messier plants so the tips of their branches are at least 8 feet from the pool.

Note that shorter plants' leaves and flower petals are less likely to get caught by the wind and be blown into the pool. Options include ornamental grasses such as ophiopogon, liriope and maiden grass and small shrubs such as 'Harbour Dwarf' nandina and dwarf yaupon holly.

Choose trees and shrubs (maples, forsythia, etc.) that drop their leaves in a short period and you can do one cleanup. Crape myrtles are a poor choice because their flowers fall for months (staining the sidewalks) and their leaves drop in fall, too. Droppings from fruit trees are also a problem.

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How to Landscape Around a Pool | eHow