RELATED ARTICLESDecorative Garden Accents
Think of your garden like you would a room in your home. After planning the shape, tilling the soil, choosing the right plants the last step is to add those personal touches. And just like indoors this is accomplished with accessories.
How to Grow Bamboo
Bamboo is a mysterious and elusive plant that baffles taxonomists who try to contain it within a botanical class and gardeners who try to contain it within a limited garden space as they learn how to grow bamboo. For many years, bamboo was thought to be a primitive grass but recent DNA testing has shown it to be one of the most highly evolved forest grasses. There are over 1200 forms of bamboo that grow in a broad spectrum of color including the familiar green and gold as well as burgundy, blue and even black grasses. Some varieties of bamboo can grow up to a foot a day and ultimately reach 130 feet tall while the smallest bamboo cultivar attains only six inches of growth.
Garden for Birds #3
Well, another week is passing us by.
Brighten Your Path By Installing Decorative Landscape Lighting
Landscape lighting can add a beautiful quality to any home. There are many choices available to someone who is considering it. Landscape lighting, and any outdoor lighting, can help protect a home as well as keep people from stumbling in the yard. Mainly, people purchase landscape lighting to enhance the appearance of their yard or landscaping.
Lawn Care Business Owners - Dont Buy Yourself A Job
Most businesses consist of the owner only or the owner and a few employees. The owner continues to do the same activity whether it is labor or crew management for many years. He gets into the"comfort zone" or "rut" and does the same thing day in and day out.
The Protea Family (Proteaceae)
The protea family (Proteaceae) includes a wide range of ground covers, trees and shrubs that often make superb garden plants. While some of the species are frost-tender, they are in all other respects remarkably resilient plants that often thrive in situations where others would rapidly succumb. Poor soils and hot dry positions that scarcely seem capable of supporting life are often ideal for Proteaceae. If any plants could be said to thrive on neglect the proteas can.
Water Pond Designs
You can have different water pond designs, however ones that don't restrict water movement are the best. What I mean by that is you don't want to have a backyard pond with tight corners in it where it will be hard for water to circulate.
Summer Pond Tips
Low Oxygen levels Kill Fish
Gardeners: Contain Yourselves!
Whether you live in a tiny city apartment or on a large country estate, gardening in containers is a way to add colour and the beauty of nature to your surroundings. The three main elements of creating successful containers gardens are:
Hot Feeding Tips
Summer is the most enjoyable water gardening season and the time
to watch for potential problems caused by high water temperatures
during extreme or extended hot periods.
Frame Your Garden With Edging
You've planted the flowers, put in the shrubs and even added a bird bath and a few garden decorations, but what's missing? Could it be the edging?
How to Create a Zen Garden
When you hear the term "Zen Garden" the picture conjured up is of a dry landscape with rocks surrounded by carefully raked gravel which invites you to withdraw from the noise of the world outside and to enter into silent meditation. Some say that zen priests adopted the dry landscape style in the eleventh century as an aid to create a deeper understanding of the zen concepts, but others hold that the Japanese Zen Garden is a myth. They claim that it is a late 20th Century western creation that has nothing to do with the Japanese Garden Tradition and that the dry garden style is not unique to zen temples but can be found associated with many other buildings.
Landscaping Design - The Primary Principles
Principles refer to standards or prescriptions for working with or arranging various elements to produce the intended landscape design. Good landscape design follows a combination of seven principles: unity, balance, proportion, focalization or emphasis, sequence or transition, rhythm, and repetition.
The Perfect Garden Sundial
Is it possible for a garden sundial to tell perfect
time?
How To Find Cheap Flower Delivery In Your Area
As humans, we are always on the lookout for a deal. Deals on flower delivery are no exception. We use flowers as gifts for so many occasion such as birthdays, anniversaries, deaths, births, graduations and many, many more. We could probably come up with an event or celebration that could constitute giving flowers at least once a month. Instead of paying retail (or more) each time we need to order flowers, we would all like a great deal. Many methods of finding cheap flower delivery exist, you just need to know how to find them.
Gardening Tips and Tricks for Late Autumn
Preparing for the Winter Months: Gardening in October
The Perfect Accent -- Miniature Roses
Indoors or out, you'll find miniature roses very easy to grow. These little guys sometimes get overlooked because they give off little fragrance, yet they can be the perfect visual accent to any home or garden.
Early Spring Garden Guide: What To Do In The Yard And Garden Now
Can't wait to get back to the garden? Use this handy spring garden guide to get started. Believe it or not, the key is avoid getting too impatient and doing certain jobs too soon.
Early spring jobs: in the yard
Start winter cleanup of the lawn when the grass is no longer sopping wet and planting beds stop being a sea of mud. Rake your lawn to get rid of dead growth, stray leaves, twigs and winter debris and let light and air to the soil level, encouraging the grass to grow.
Re-seed bare or damaged patches of lawn. Scratch up the soil with a rake first. Mix a shovel of soil with a couple of scoops of grass seed and spread in the patch you're fixing. Rake level and keep well-watered until seeds germinate and the new grass establishes.
Remove tree guards or burlap winter protection from any young trees or shrubs. Try not to leave tree guards in place over the summer. They keep rabbits and mice from nibbling on tender bark over the winter, but trees don't need them in summer. They don't allow enough air movement around the base of the trunk and that can promote rot of the bark.
Transplant any existing shrubs you want to move before they begin to leaf out.
Weeds start growing vigorously early, so when you spot them, go to it. Getting on top of the weeding now means a lot less work later. Weeds are easier to pull out while their roots are still shallow in early spring.
Apply dormant oil spray to fruit trees, magnolias, crabapples and shrubs such as euonymous to control scale insects and other overwintering pests. Use this organic pest control method when the buds are swelling but the leaves haven't opened yet. Apply when temperatures are between 40 and 70 degrees F (4-21 degrees C).
Get your lawn mower checked and its blades sharpened if you didn't get the job done in late winter. Sharp blades cut better and leave your lawn grass healthier.
Early spring garden jobs: In the flower garden
Don't be in a rush to remove winter mulch or to cut back evergreen plants such as lavender until temperatures are reliably warm.
Freeze and thaw cycles over the winter may given some of your plants the heave-ho. Replant any perennials that the frost has heaved out of the ground as soon as you can.
Cut back any remaining dead perennial foliage from last season (trimmings can go into the compost).
Cut back ornamental grasses to about 10 inches from the ground.
Remove winter protection of mounded earth from roses. Prune rose bushes before they start to leaf out.
Resist the urge to start digging in your flower beds too early. You can damage the soil's structure. If you pick up a handful of soil, it should fall apart, not stick together like glue. When it's dry enough, you can start to dig beds and add compost or manure in preparation for planting.
Grass growth is vigorous in the early spring garden, so edge your flower beds with a sharp trench between them and the grass to keep it in bounds. Repeat this job a couple of times through the season, or installing permanent edging goes a long way towards having a lower maintenance flower garden.
Landscape Wallpaper
Landscape wallpaper can be a great addition to your computer's desktop. Since most of us always have our PCs running, it is refreshing to see a beautiful masterpiece on the display when the computer is not in use. You may even be able to download landscape screensavers as well.
Teak Garden Furniture: A Natural Extension of the Home
In the past, the garden has traditionally been a separate entity, with wrought iron or plastic furniture dotting the landscape in no particular design pattern. Seen as simply a place to have a picnic or, perhaps, read a book on a nice day, attention wasn't given to the fact that the garden is a natural extension of the home.
